putterings 277 < 278 > 279 index
not of the theater, the heap of garments, the violet-tinted note
Miss Herter felt for her stockings in the little hammock and began to draw them hastily on. To her this was ridiculous; but Drusilla was not of the theater, and by some curious mischance she must have heard of Johnny’s escapade. She scrambled on some clothes, anathematizing the heap of garments that would not go on straight.
Once out in the wet moonlight Emmy was afraid. Tramps hung about the station yards, and she wished the puttering engine which had gone ambling up a track toward the reluctant scenery car was nearer, for its company. Yet if she who walked alone through life had fear, what must be the quaking of sheltered Drusie! She moved toward the dingy station confident that the girl would be within the waiting-room. She peered through the window; the ticket agent was gone, but there was no runaway.
With real anguish she turned toward the waters of the lake. But feminine intuition dismissed the horror from her mind. It couldn’t be — when the water was so cold. And yet Drusied was different from them. She started to run swiftly toward the water’s edge.
“Miss Herter!” It was a welcome voice. Behind a pile of crated farming implements Miss Herter found her: smaller than usual, shaking but resolute, with the iron convention of her forbears in her face — and in her purse enough of Johnny’s money to take the train in half an hour to mother.
—
Louise Closser Hale, “Miss Herter’s Young Couple” — What Came of the Violet-Tinted Note and the Eating of “That Doughnut” — Illustrations by R. M. Crosby — in The Ladies’ Home Journal 27:1 (January 1915) : 19, 38 : link
same (U Michigan copy, via hathitrust) : link
Louise Closser Hale (1872-1933), actress, playwright, novelist
wikipedia : link