“So she is really going to Coniston,” said Mr. Merrill.

“Yes,” answered Mrs. Merrill, “and I think she is doing right, Stephen.”

Mr. Merrill groaned.  His wife rose and put her hand on his shoulder.

“Come, Stephen,” she said gently, “you will see her in the morning.

“I will go to Coniston with her,” he said.

“No,” replied Mrs. Merrily “she wants to go alone.  And I believe it is best that she should.”

CHAPTER XII

Great afflictions generally bring in their train a host of smaller sorrows, each with its own little pang.  One of these sorrows had been the parting with the Merrill family.  Under any circumstance it was not easy for Cynthia to express her feelings, and now she had found it very difficult to speak of the gratitude and affection which she felt.  But they understood—­dear, good people that they were:  no eloquence was needed with them.  The ordeal of breakfast over, and the tearful “God bless you, Miss Cynthia,” of Ellen the parlor-maid, the whole family had gone with her to the station.  For Susan and Jane had spent their last day at Miss Sadler’s school.

Mr. Merrill had sent for the conductor and bidden him take care of Miss Wetherell, and recommend her in his name to a conductor on the Truro Road.  The man took off his cap to Mr. Merrill and called him by name and promised.  It was a dark day, and long after the train had pulled out Cynthia remembered the tearful faces of the family standing on the damp platform of the station.  As they fled northward through the flat river-meadows, the conductor would have liked to talk to her of Mr. Merrill; there were few employees on any railroad who did not know the genial and kindly president of the Grand Gulf and sympathize with his troubles.  But there was a look on the girl’s face that forbade intrusion.  Passengers stared at her covertly, as though fascinated by that look, and some tried to fathom it.  But her eyes were firmly fixed upon a point far beyond their vision.  The car stopped many times, and flew on again, but nothing seemed to break her absorption.

At last she was aroused by the touch of the conductor on her sleeve.  The people were beginning to file out of the car, and the train was under the shadow of the snow-covered sheds in the station of the state capital.  Cynthia recognized the place, though it was cold and bare and very different in appearance from what it had been on the summer’s evening when she had come into it with her father.  That, in effect, had been her first glimpse of the world, and well she recalled the thrill it had given her.  The joy of such things was gone now, the rapture of holidays and new sights.  These were over, so she told herself.  Sorrow had quenched the thrills forever.

The kind conductor led her to the eating room, and when she would not eat his concern drew greater than ever.  He took a strange interest in this young lady who had such a face and such eyes.  He pointed her out to his friend the Truro conductor, and gave him some sandwiches and fruit which he himself had bought, with instructions to press them on her during the afternoon.