Cries reverberated under the great glass dome, and trains pulled out with deafening roars.  Honora had a strange feeling, as of pressure from within, that caused her to take deep breaths of the smoky air.  She but half heard what was being said to her:  she wished that the train would go, and at the same time she had a sudden, surprising, and fierce longing to stay.  She had been able to eat scarcely a mouthful of that festal dinner which Bridget had spent the afternoon in preparing, comprised wholly of forbidden dishes of her childhood, for which Bridget and Aunt Mary were justly famed.  Such is the irony of life.  Visions of one of Aunt Mary’s rare lunch-parties and of a small girl peeping covetously through a crack in the dining-room door, and of the gold china set, rose before her.  But she could not eat.

“Bread and jam and tea at Miss Turner’s,” Uncle Tom had said, and she had tried to smile at him.

And now they were standing on the platform, and the train might start at any moment.

“I trust you won’t get like the New Yorkers, Honora,” said Aunt Mary.  “Do you remember how stiff they were, Tom?” She was still in the habit of referring to that memorable trip when they had brought Honora home.  “And they say now that they hold their heads higher than ever.”

“That,” said Uncle Tom, gravely, “is a local disease, and comes from staring at the tall buildings.”

“Uncle Tom!”

Peter presented the parcel under his arm.  It was a box of candy, and very heavy, on which much thought had been spent.

“They are some of the things you like,” he said, when he had returned from putting it in the berth.

“How good of you, Peter!  I shall never be able to eat all that.”

“I hope there is a doctor on the train,” said Uncle Tom.

“Yassah,” answered the black porter, who had been listening with evident relish, “right good doctah—­Doctah Lov’ring.”

Even Aunt Mary laughed.

“Peter,” asked Honora, “can’t you get Judge Brice to send you on to New York this winter on law business?  Then you could come up to Sutcliffe to see me.”

“I’m afraid of Miss Turner,” declared Peter.

“Oh, she wouldn’t mind you,” exclaimed Honora.  “I could say you were an uncle.  It would be almost true.  And perhaps she would let you take me down to New York for a matinee.”

“And how about my ready-made clothes?” he said, looking down at her.  He had never forgotten that.

Honora laughed.

“You don’t seem a bit sorry that I’m going,” she replied, a little breathlessly.  “You know I’d be glad to see you, if you were in rags.”

“All aboard!” cried the porter, grinning sympathetically.

Honora threw her arms around Aunt Mary and clung to her.  How small and frail she was!  Somehow Honora had never realized it in all her life before.

“Good-by, darling, and remember to put on your thick clothes on the cool days, and write when you get to New York.”