Up to this moment Thurley had not experienced homesickness, but as the cab shot on in patrician fashion she began recalling the fattened turkey they would have at Birge’s Corners and the way Betsey had made her pudding and Christmas cakes days before, as well as the nights Dan had called for her to have her aid in trimming the store windows with make-believe fireplaces and tinsel stars; the way the boys and girls went into the woods for the smallest fir trees and decorated the church until it was “a bower of beauty,” according to the _Gazette_ report; how the choir would practise the Christmas anthem and carols night after night with Thurley directing, playing the organ and singing. On Christmas morning would come the service with Thurley, the envy of every girl in town because of her new pin or bracelet or chain which Dan had given her, singing “The Birthday of a King” in a glorious, clear voice—like some one permitted to sing down from the clouds for an instant!
Oh, it was good to remember—_good?_—Thurley’s eyes filled with tears. She told the man to drive on until she ordered him to turn back to her hotel. She laughed as she snuggled down in the machine, drawing a robe over her lap and prepared to dream-remember. As she did so, she recalled Caleb Patmore’s saying to Ernestine one afternoon at tea,
“I’m going into the ooze again.” To which Ernestine answered,
“Jolly lark, isn’t it? Don’t make it a habit or you may slip into it altogether—then you would be helpless.”
“Take the advice for yourself,” he had retorted, to which she nodded her head and the subject was dropped. When Thurley asked her about it, Ernestine said with a trace of confusion,
“You child, you’re not ready for any ‘ooze’ game yet; you are still in it in actuality to an extent. When you begin to want to go to nerve specialists and are not hungry enough for bread and butter but keen on frosted cake as it were, knowing nothing but work and wanting to know nothing but play, when your day’s program—not the one written by your press agent—is as impossible as a typewritten love letter, you’ll find the ooze. I’ll show you how to find it.”
But Thurley had insisted, like a true Pandora, upon knowing and so Ernestine good-naturedly tried to explain.