nervously a bundle of packages. Eliza glanced sharply at her long straight legs and thought of the half-fare.
“Say,” she began, laughing indefinitely behind her hand, and nudging Gant, “she’ll have to scrooch up, won’t she? They’ll think you’re mighty big to be under twelve,” she went on, addressing the girl directly.
Helen stirred nervously.
“We shouldn’t have done that,” Gant muttered.
“Pshaw!” said Eliza. “No one will ever notice her.”
He saw them into the train, disposed comfortably by the solicitous Pullman porter.
“Keep your eye on them, George,” he said, and gave the man a coin. Eliza eyed it jealously.
He kissed them all roughly with his mustache, but he patted his little girl’s bony shoulders with his great hand, and hugged her to him. Something stabbed sharply in Eliza.
They had an awkward moment. The strangeness, the absurdity of the whole project, and the monstrous fumbling of all life, held them speechless.
“Well,” he began, “I reckon you know what you’re doing.”
“Well, I tell you,” she said, pursing her lips, and looking out the window, “you don’t know what may come out of this.”
He was vaguely appeased. The train jerked, and moved off slowly. He kissed her clumsily.
“Let me know as soon as you get there,” he said, and he strode swiftly down the aisle.
“Good-by, good-by,” cried Eliza, waving Eugene’s small hand at the long figure on the platform. “Children,” she said, “wave good-by to your papa.” They all crowded to the window. Eliza wept.
Eugene watched the sun wane and redden on a rocky river, and on the painted rocks of Tennessee gorges: the enchanted river wound into his child’s mind forever. Years later, it was to be remembered in dreams tenanted with elvish and mysterious beauty. Stilled in great wonder, he went to sleep to the rhythmical pounding of the heavy wheels.
They lived in a white house on the corner. There was a small plot
