Chapter 2

She allowed me to tuck her in. It was too dark for me to see what she was like--she was so swathed and tied up. Being still mad--fires drawn but still dangerous, I concluded that my companion was sour, and skinny, with a parrot nose and one tooth gone. That I was to pass the night at her house did not improve the estimate; there would be mottoes on the walls--“What is home without a mother,” and the like; tidies on the chairs, and a red-hot stove smelling of drying socks. There would also be a basin and pitcher the size of a cup and saucer, and a bed that sagged in the middle and was covered with a cotton quilt.

The _Nautilus_ stopped at a gate, beyond which was a smaller Jacob's ladder leading to a white cottage. Was there nothing built on a level in Sheffield? I asked myself. The bags which had been hung on the shafts came first, then I, then the muffled head and cloak. Upward and onward again, through a door, past a pretty girl who stood with her hand on the knob in welcome, and into a hall. Here the girl helped unmummy her mother, and then turned up the hall-lamp.

Oh, such a dear, sweet gray-haired old lady! The kind of an old lady you would have wanted to stay--not a night with--but a year. An old lady with plump fresh cheeks and soft brown eyes and a smile that warmed you through and through. And such an all-embracing restful room with its open wood fire, andirons and polished fender--and the plants and books and easy-chairs! And the cheer of it all!

“Now you just sit there and get comfortable,” she said, patting my shoulder--(the second time in one night that a woman's hand had been that of an angel). “Maggie'll get you some supper. We had it all ready, expecting you on the six-ten. Hungry, aren't you?”

Hungry! I could have gnawed a hole in a sofa to get at the straw stuffing.

She drew up a chair, waited till her daughter had left the room, and said with a twinkle in her eyes:

“Oh, I was glad you gave it to 'em the way you did, and when you sailed into that snivelling old Hard-shell deacon, I just put my hands down under my petticoats and clapped them for joy. There isn't anybody running anything up here. They don't have to pay for this lecture course. It was given to them by a man who is dead. All they think they've got to do is to dress themselves up. They're all officers; there's a recording secretary and a corresponding secretary and an executive committee and a president and two vice-presidents, and a lot more that I can't remember. Everyone of them is leaving everything to somebody else to attend to. I know, because I take care of all the lecturers that come. Only last winter a lady lecturer arrived here on a load of wood; she didn't lose her temper and get mad like you did. Maybe you know her; she told us all about the Indians and her husband, the great general, who was surrounded and massacred by them.”

“Know her, Madam, not only do I know and love her, but the whole country loves her. She is a saint, Madam, that the good Lord only allows to live in this world because if she was transferred there would be no standard left.”

“Yes, but then you had considerable cause. The hired girl next door--she sat next to my daughter--said she didn't blame you a mite.” (Somebody was on my side, anyhow.) “Now come in to supper.”

The next morning I was up at dawn: I had to get up at dawn because the omnibus made only one trip to the station, to catch the seven-o'clock train. I went by the eight-ten, but a little thing like that never makes any difference in Sheffield.

When the omnibus arrived it came on runners. Closer examination from the window of the cosey room--the bedroom was even more delightful--revealed a square furniture van covered on the outside with white canvas, the door being in the middle, like a box-car. I bade the dear old lady and her daughter good-by, opened the hall door and stood on the top step. The driver, a stout, fat-faced fellow, looked up with an inquiring glance.

“Nice morning,” I cried in my customary cheerful tone--the dear woman had wrought the change.

“You bet! Got over your mad?”

The explosion had evidently been heard all over the village.

“Yes,” I laughed, as I crawled in beside two other passengers.

“You was considerable het up last night, so Si was tellin' me,” remarked the passenger, helping me with one bag.

I nodded. Who Si might be was not of special interest, and then again the subject had now lost its inflammatory feature.

The woman made no remark; she was evidently one of the secretaries.

“Well, by gum, if they had left me where they left you last night, and you a plumb stranger, I'd rared and pitched a little myself,” continued the man. “When you come again--”

“Come again! Not by a--”

“Oh, yes, you will. You did them Hard-shells a lot of good! You just bet your bottom dollar they'll look out for the next one of you fellows that comes up here!”

The woman continued silent. She would have something to say about any return visit of mine, and she intended to say it out loud if the time ever came!

The station now loomed into sight. I sprang out and tried the knob. I knew all about that knob--every twist and turn of it.

“Locked again!” I shouted, “and I've got to wait here an hour in this--”

“Hold on--_hold on_--” shouted back the driver. “Don't break loose again. I got the key.”

My mail a week later brought me a county paper containing this statement: “The last lecturer, owing to some error on the part of the committee, was not met at the train and was considerably vexed. He said so to the audience and to the committee. Everybody was satisfied with his talk until they heard what they had to pay for it. He also said that he had left his dress suit in his trunk. If what we hear is true, he left his manners with it.” On reflection, the editor was right--_I had_.

End of Project Gutenberg's Forty Minutes Late, by F. Hopkinson Smith