261
June 1931
T h e
K i n g ’ s
B u s i n e s s
The Return o f the Tide A Serial Story by Zenobia Bird
quiet the child. All about her were registered frowns of disapproval. Presently she took the child on her lap, but the crying did not cease. The complaints in the car grew louder. “If a woman can’t take any better care of a baby than that, she ought to leave' it at home where it belongs,” growled a man to his wife sitting almost opposite. There was no attempt to lower his voice, and the mother could not help but hear. Marian winced at his rudeness, and she saw the mother’s sensitive face flush as she bent over the child and tried to smother its crying in her bosom. Marian looked away out of the window and tried again to enjoy the view, but a vision of the frail little mother’s troubled face came between. The lusty crying had ceased, but there was a cross and fretful wail from time to time, although the mother was doing her utmost now to keep the child entertained and quiet. She looked pitifully ill herself, and Marian began really to be concerned about her. As she sat and pondered, it seemed almost as though some one stood before her offering her a choice. She could clasp her own sorrows and trials, and hug them so closely to her as to shut out every other thing; or she could resolutely push past them, for a little time at least, while she went on an errand to help another. There was not the slightest sense of compulsion, only a feeling of being given a choice for her own decision. She had a way with children that usually won them to herself, without any difficulty. Should she give up the quiet rest, the sense of peace and comfort which was the first she had enjoyed in months, in order to go to the help of a perfect stranger who might even resent interference ? She would no t! She resolutely turned her face toward the window again. She never tired of watching the passing landscape. But the kind heart of the real Marian Linton refused to be silent. She turned for one more look at the distur ber of her peace. For a minute the somber brown eyes looked straight into brimming blue ones. And then they softened and fell. Marian sprang to her feet, and in an instant she had dropped into the seat beside the little woman with the baby. “Can I help you?” she asked gently. “Oh, I am so ashamed. You see, I have been ill, and unable to care for my baby for months. But I had to make this trip, and I had to come alone. I thought I could manage him, but I am still so terribly weak.” .Her voice trembled, and the tears would come. Mar ian saw the man across the way suddenly slouch back into his seat and conceal as much of his person as possible behind an open newspaper. The baby was quiet, regarding her with interest. She smiled at him, and was rewarded with an answering dimple. “Is he afraid of strangers?” she asked. “No, he isn’t. He has been cared for by strangers
When Marian Linton’s home had been broken up after the death of her parents and the flight of her only brother, she had rented a cheap room until she could go to the home of a cousin. The time of waiting was a time of doubting both God and man, a time when even love and hope seemed dead. It was then that she had made the final break with Nelson Barrington, whose college train ing had been the means of shattering the faith of both of them. A few days before Marian must give up her room, her Cousin Rhetta wrote, postponing indefinitely the in tended visit. Iii despair, the lonely girl at last turned to God with a faltering prayer for guidance. The answer came in the form of a letter from Joyce Goodwin, an al most-forgotten college friend, inviting Marian to her home- Chapter III S the train pulled slowly out of the station, Marian jlP || turned her face to the window as though strain- J|(Yr| ing to catch a last glimpse of some one standing ¿gypll there. She had done it so often before, but this time it was only to hide the tears that would iML, come unbidden. Was that Nelson Barrington standing in the doorway, his face intently watching the eddying crowd? What was he doing there at that hour? Had some rumor of her flight or her destination reached him in some way? She had left her new address with her friend, but had given instructions that to all inquiries the answer was simply to be that Marian Linton had left the city to be gone indefinitely. With blurred vision she watched the old familiar land marks flying past, and then settled herself with a maga zine and prepared to while away the hours of the long afternoon. But she could not read. The question of the future, like a great blank wall to be scaled, rose again and again before her. She tried to make some kind of plan for her life, but there seemed none—only chaos. As she gazed out at the swift-passing scenery, there came, however, a measure of quiet enjoyment, almost peace. She en joyed traveling; it had always rested her. At one of the stations, late in the afternoon, there boarded the train a tired-looking little mother carrying in her arms a baby of perhaps a year or two. She looked very weary as she followed the Pullman porter down the aisle and took a section not far from Marian. She set the child on one seat for a moment as she sank into the other, whereupon the youngster set up a wailing cry that grew louder and louder until it seemed out of all pro portion to the size of the small person from whom it emanated. Marian had given only a glance at the mother as she had come down through the car, but after a few minutes she turned to look again. The poor woman seemed ill or troubled, and appeared to be making no attempt to
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