Six or eight men in "dusters," carrying
parcels and handbags, projected themselves upon the solitary, rickety
carry-all, so that Ransom could read his own fate, while the ruminating
conductor of the vehicle, a lean, shambling citizen, with a long neck
and a tuft on his chin, guessed that if he wanted to get to the hotel
before dusk he would have to strike out. His valise was attached in a
precarious manner to the rear of the carry-all. "Well, I'll chance it,"
the driver remarked sadly, when Ransom protested against its insecure
position. He recognised the southern quality of that picturesque
fatalism--judged that Miss Chancellor and Verena Tarrant must be pretty
thoroughly relaxed if they had given themselves up to the genius of the
place. This was what he hoped for and counted on, as he took his way,
the sole pedestrian in the group that had quitted the train, in the wake
of the overladen carry-all. It helped him to enjoy the first country
walk he had had for many months, for more than months, for years, that
the reflexion was forced upon him as he went (the mild, vague scenery,
just beginning to be dim with twilight, suggested it at every step) that
the two young women who constituted, at Marmion, his whole prefigurement
of a social circle, must, in such a locality as that, be taking a
regular holiday. The sense of all the wrongs they had still to redress
must be lighter there than it was in Boston; the ardent young man had,
for the hour, an ingenuous hope that they had left their opinions in the
city.
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