Brown helping and Gabriella close by me all the time. Gabriella couldn't seem to do enough. I saw her slip her pink kimono into my suit-case; I saw her pin one of her beautiful pearl bars on my red silk waist. She got out my new blue suit and brushed it; my new hat with the red quills; and while I combed my hair, she laced my new tan shoes. I understood that it was her way of telling me how sorry she was, for every once in a while she'd have to stop and cry. Once she said, "Oh, I am so sorry I've been so mean. I hope—oh, I do hope you'll come back, Lucy." But I didn't care now. It was too late. All my thoughts were with my family who needed me. I gathered their dear pictures together in a pile and put them in my suit-case—Father's picture too, but I didn't trust myself to look at it. Dear Father—but I didn't dare let myself think, just at first.
I felt in the air that all the girls knew my news about as soon as I did. Of course they didn't come near me. Even if I had been popular I don't believe they would have come. Sorrow somehow builds up such a barrier, and the one or two girls I met in the corridors kept close to the other wall and tried to avoid meeting my eyes. Gabriella and Miss Brown and the English teacher, whom I had always hated, saw me off. I begged to take the trip alone and Miss Brown finally allowed it.
I thought of everything during that journey, and the more I thought the more I trusted myself to think, I don't know what made me so clear-headed and fearless, but I'd run my thoughts right up to any hard truth, and they wouldn't balk; they'd go right over. My mother had died when I was so little that I did
