ter, to be barked at by hopeful cabmen and enviously eyed by the dull inhabitants of an uninspired world.
Grainger left Mary at the elevator in the trackless palm forest of the Idealia. After he had gone she came down again carrying a small hand-bag, ’phoned for a cab, drove to the Grand Central Station, boarded a 12.55 commuter’s train, rode four hours with her burnt-umber head bobbing against the red-plush back of the seat, and landed during a fresh, stinging, glorious sunrise at a deserted station, the size of a peach crate, called Crocusville.
She walked a mile and clicked the latch of a gate. A bare, brown cottage stood twenty yards back; an old man with a pearl-white, Calvinistic face and clothes dyed blacker than a raven in a coal-mine was washing his hands in a tin basin on the front porch.
“How are you, father?” said Mary timidly.
“I am as well as Providence permits, Mary Ann. You will find your mother in the kitchen.”
In the kitchen a cryptic, gray woman kissed her glacially on the forehead, and pointed out the potatoes which were not yet peeled for breakfast. Mary sat in a wooden chair and decorticated spuds, with a thrill in her heart.
For breakfast there were grace, cold bread, potatoes, bacon, and tea.
“You are pursuing the same avocation in the city
[227]
