Just Her Way

(1899)

~

"Look out of the window, Judith! Quick! Mrs. Avery is going away!" Judith Windham, bending over the sewing-machine in her bedroom, started as her little sister's voice came piping shrilly up the stairs, and leaving her chair she leaned out of the old-fashioned casement window.

There were so few goings and comings in sleepy little Westbrooke, that the passing of the village omnibus was an exciting event. With an imposing rumble of yellow wheels it rattled up to Doctor Allen's gate across the road. A trunk, a dress suit case, and numerous valises were hoisted to the top of it, and the doctor's family flocked down to the gate to watch the departure of the youngest member of their household, Marguerite.

It had been four years since the first time they watched her go away, a nineteen-year-old bride. Since then they had visited her, severally and collectively, in her elegant apartments in Washington, but this had been her first visit home. Judith, watching her flutter down the walk with her hand in the old doctor's, thought she looked even prettier and more girlish than on her wedding-day. Married life had been all roses for Marguerite.

"She's the same dear old harum-scarum Daisy she always was, in spite of the efforts of her Lord Chesterfield of a husband to reform her," thought Judith, fondly, as her old schoolmate, catching sight of her at the window, waved her parasol so wildly that the staid old 'bus horses began to plunge.

The girls had bidden each other good-bye the night before, but Marguerite stopped in the midst of her final embracings to call out, "Good-bye, again, Judith. Remember, I shall expect you the first of February." Then the slender figure in its faultless tailor-made gown disappeared into the omnibus. Her husband, a distinguished, scholarly man, lifted his hat once more and stepped in after her. The door banged behind them, and, creaking and swaying, the ancient vehicle moved off in a cloud of dust.

Feeling that something very bright and interesting had dropped out of her life, Judith went back to the sewing-machine. As she picked up her work an involuntary sigh escaped her.

"That's a very sorry sound, Judith. Are you tired?"

It was a sympathetic voice that asked the question, and Judith looked up with a smile. Her mother's cousin stood in the doorway--a prim little old spinster, who had been their guest for several days. Like Marguerite, she, too, had come back to her native village after an absence of four years, but not to her father's house. She was all alone in the world, save for a few distant relatives who called her Cousin Barbara. After a short visit, she would go away for another long absence, but not, like Marguerite, to a life full of many interests and pleasures. She had only her music pupils in a little Pennsylvania mining town, and a room in a boarding-house.