DUSKIN Read Online Free Page B

situation.’ Why, Mother, I expect to be carried around on a throne!”
    “Mercy!” said her mother apprehensively. “To think you’re grown up and have to do things like that! I don’t know what your father would have said to me if he had known I would let you go off alone like this. You’ve always been sheltered.”
    “Exactly, little mother!” said Carol with a firm set of her lips. “I have! But the time has come when I’ve got to take care of myself for a while. It does come, you know, no matter how long you try to hold it off. I’m not a baby, and you know you really don’t believe that I can’t take care of myself after all these years you’ve spent on bringing me up. Isn’t it almost time I had a chance to try myself out? Come now, wipe away those tears, little mother, and forget it. I’m going to have the time of my life out there! It’s going to be different from anything I ever did, and I’m going to make a story out of it to write to you. There may not be any sand, but I’ll warrant there’s a decent hotel, and very likely I’ll meet up with plenty of rocks of one sort or another before I get done. It’s really going to be fabulous when I get going, so don’t have any more worries about it.”
    She forced a smile and her mother brushed an anxious tear furtively from her cheek and tried to summon a gleam of a smile to answer her with. But the young sister continued to look displeased.
    “I don’t see how you thought it was right to disappoint Jean and Edith,” she put in. “Did you tell them? Weren’t they terribly upset about it?”
    “I just had time to call up Jean and tell her in one sentence before I left the office. Yes, Jean was rather put out. I’m afraid I didn’t make her see how necessary it was that I should go. I wish you’d call her up, Betts, when you get home, and try to make her understand. Perhaps you’ll call Edith, too. I hated to go with only a word to them, but I didn’t have another second to spare.”
    “Of course we will,” said her mother lovingly. “Oh, Carol, I put your Bible in your bag. You’ll promise to read a few verses every day, won’t you, dear?” The mother’s pleading eyes were full of tears. Of course Carol promised, though somewhat impatiently.
    “All aboard,” shouted the brakeman, and Mrs. Berkley caught her daughter in one last quick embrace and then they were gone.
    The train moved out from the station and Carol realized that she was actually on her way.
    For a moment she had an impulse to jump up and run out to the platform and try to get off. How
could
she go off like this into unknown responsibilities and leave behind all the pleasant vacation that had been planned so long?
    Then, as the train moved more swiftly, she realized how childish she was, after all her brave words to her mother. She deliberately forced herself to go over everything to make sure she had not left anything undone. It was as if she must keep on with the breathless race she had been running for the last three hours or she would lose herself entirely.
    The parting with her family was naturally still uppermost in her mind. How disappointed they had been for her in the loss of her long-expected vacation. It was almost as if they had lost something themselves. But how foolish her mother had been about her going off alone! And then insisting on that silly promise to read her Bible every day! She would have to keep it of course, because she had been brought up with a conscience, but how annoying it was going to be—always having to remember that! She would not have time to read the Bible! Why was mother like that?
    Suddenly she realized that she was weak with hunger, and putting aside her annoyance, she made her way to the dining car.
    Most of the tables in the diner were already filled, but Carol found a vacancy at the far end of the car beside a lady with two small children.
    Dining cars were not a common experience to Carol Berkley, and she scanned the menu