Part 42 (2/2)

Maizie it was who at last broke the thrilling silence: ”Where there's an ocean? And where you can go wading and swimming?” she cried.

”And will there be sand?” asked Suzanna, hanging upon the answer breathlessly.

”Yes, there's a wide yellow beach running into the ocean where you can dig and build castles all day,” said Mrs. Bartlett.

”Oh, my cup is full and runneth over,” said Suzanna solemnly.

The train swept on through small towns and the children's delight and amazement increased. And when at noon the climax came, and they all went forward into the dining-car, they were one and all silent. No words great enough were in their vocabulary to express this moment.

Said Mr. Bartlett when they were all seated: ”Now, children, you may order just exactly what you'd like. You first, Suzanna.”

”Well,” she said, without hesitation, ”I should like some golden brown toast that isn't burned, with lots of b.u.t.ter on it, and a cup of cocoa with a marshmallow floating on top, and at the very last, a dish of striped ice cream with a cherry right in the middle.”

Mr. Bartlett wrote the order rapidly on a card. Each of the children spoke out his deepest, perhaps his long-cherished desire. Some of the dishes were secretly and mercifully modified by Mrs. Bartlett, who sat in enjoyment of the scene.

”It's like a dream, Mrs. Bartlett,” said Suzanna when, dinner finished, they were all back once more in the parlor car. ”You don't think we'll wake up, do you?”

”No, I think not; you'll simply get wider and wider awake.”

But, as the hours crept on and as she watched the flying landscape, the reaction to all her excitement came and a haze fell over everything, and she slept, to awaken some time later, full of contrition.

She spoke anxiously to Mrs. Bartlett: ”Oh, I appreciated it all, Mrs.

Bartlett, but my eyes just closed down of themselves,” she said.

Mrs. Bartlett smiled. ”It's a long journey,” she said, ”but we'll soon see the end of it.”

At nine o'clock the train stopped for the first time since dark had fallen. ”Here we are,” cried Mr. Bartlett. And in a few moments they were all standing on the platform of a little railroad station waiting while carriages were being secured to take them for the night to a hotel nestling on the top of a tall hill.

CHAPTER XXIV

THE SEASh.o.r.e

Morning came--a rather misty morning that promised better as the day advanced. Suzanna, sleeping with Maizie in a small room on the second floor of the hotel, woke, gazed about her unfamiliar surroundings, sprang out of bed, and in her bare feet ran to the window. There before her was a magnificent group of mountains, wooded with majestic trees whose tops seemed to touch the sky. Beneath the mountains, just at their feet, a river ran, the sun dancing on its breast. Suzanna held her breath in sheer awe; she could not move even to call Maizie. She felt as though something great out there in the mountains called to her spirit and though she wished to answer she could not do so.

The tapestry spread below the mountains of water and green slopes and velvet meadows sun-kissed too, called to her; the artist in her was keenly, deeply responsive to the call, still she could not answer, only stand and gaze and gaze, and drink in the beauty that stretched before her.

Then old Nancy came with hurrying words, waking Maizie. ”We can stay in this town but two hours before our train is due,” she said. ”So you must dress at once, Suzanna.”

So Suzanna dressed in silence, answering none of Maizie's chatter, as though she had been in a far, unexplored country and had returned steeped in the mysteries of that distant land.

Her silence still lay upon her when after breakfast they all set out for a walk around the historic old town. There were babies, happy, dirty babies, playing about doorsteps of one-storied plaster houses, or toddling about the cobble-stoned roads.

The streets were narrow and steep, the roads wide with moss edged in between the wide cracks. Suzanna kept her eyes down; she would not look up at the mountains, and finally Mr. Bartlett, noticing her silence, asked: ”Do you like it here, Suzanna?”

”Yes,” she said. ”But I can't look at the mountains. They take my breath away and make me stand still inside. Maybe some day I'll be able to look straight at them, but not now, and some day when I'm a woman I'm going to come back here and make a poem and set it to a wonderful painting.”

He smiled at the way she put it.

<script>