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- Herausgeber: Booksell-Verlag
- Kategorie: Religion und Spiritualität
- Sprache: Englisch
In "The Red Signal," Grace Livingston Hill artfully weaves a narrative that embodies the intersection of romance and moral integrity within the context of early 20th-century American society. The novel is characterized by its engaging prose, richly drawn characters, and an exploration of the transformative power of love and faith. Set against the backdrop of societal expectations and personal struggles, Hill adeptly employs a blend of sentimental elements and ethical dilemmas that resonate with the reader, encouraging introspection about the nature of true love and sacrifice. Grace Livingston Hill, a pioneer in the genre of Christian romance, drew upon her own experiences and beliefs to shape her literary voice. Raised in a devout family and immersed in a culture of progressive thought, Hill began writing in the early 1900s as a means to inspire and uplift her audience. Her works often reflect her commitment to portraying virtuous characters navigating life's challenges, making "The Red Signal" a quintessential example of her dedication to infusing her narratives with spiritual and moral significance. For readers seeking a compelling tale that transcends mere romance, "The Red Signal" is a must-read. Hill'Äôs ability to tackle complex emotional landscapes while imparting profound moral lessons makes this novel not only a captivating story but also a thought-provoking exploration of one'Äôs values and choices. It's an essential addition to any collection that celebrates literature with purpose.
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Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2023
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The Red Signal
Table of Contents
Introduction
At its heart, The Red Signal traces the instant when conscience flares like a warning light and compels an ordinary life to pause, measure the cost of the next step, and choose between safety, compromise, and the difficult path of courage, while faith, duty, and nascent love press in from every side to ask whether one can honor what is right without losing what is most dear.
The Red Signal is a novel by Grace Livingston Hill, a prolific American writer best known for inspirational romance and faith-centered fiction published across the first half of the twentieth century. Within that tradition, this book aligns with Hill’s hallmark emphasis on moral testing, gentleness of spirit, and the quiet heroism of everyday choices. Readers familiar with her work will recognize a narrative grounded in accessible language and clear ethical stakes, situated against an American social backdrop characteristic of the era in which she wrote. It stands as part of a body of fiction that seeks to dramatize the meeting point of conviction, compassion, and personal responsibility.
Without disclosing later turns, the premise introduces a decisive interruption—an unmistakable signal, whether outward or inward—that jolts the central character out of routine and into an unfolding test of character. The early chapters establish pressing obligations and uncertain loyalties, setting the stage for choices that may affect livelihood, trust, and future hope. The narrative invites readers to feel the pressure of time, the pull of competing voices, and the solace found in prayerful reflection. Rather than relying on spectacle, the story builds its tension through ordinary settings and recognizable dilemmas, asking what one does when the prudent path and the principled path appear to diverge.
Hill’s style is direct, warm, and purposeful, favoring lucid scenes and measured pacing over elaborate ornament. The voice remains attentive to the emotional weather of its characters—quiet anxieties, flashes of resolve, unexpected kindness—while maintaining a decorum consistent with her readership. Dialogue tends to clarify motives and affirm values, and narrative description renders homes, streets, and workplaces as moral as well as physical spaces. The mood balances comfort with urgency: a reassuring confidence that right action matters, set against the suspense of not knowing which moment will require it. The result is a reading experience that is both gentle and quietly gripping.
Key themes include the authority of conscience, the necessity of integrity under pressure, and the sustaining power of faith in uncertain times. The book also explores how trust is built or broken—between friends, within families, and in communities that watch and judge. Love, in Hill’s hands, is not merely sentiment but a proving ground for selflessness and truth-telling. The metaphor of a warning signal underscores the wisdom of pausing before decisive action, while the narrative suggests that courage often begins in small, unseen commitments. Together, these threads form a tapestry of ethical realism anchored in hope.
For contemporary readers, The Red Signal remains relevant because its central questions have not dated: How do we weigh risk and responsibility when others depend on us? What does it mean to protect those we care about without compromising what is right? Hill’s focus on everyday ethics speaks to modern dilemmas—professional, relational, and civic—where the easy answer is not always the honest one. The novel’s emphasis on reflection before action resonates in a hurried age, while its insistence on compassion offers a counterpoint to cynicism. It is an invitation to consider not just what we choose, but why we choose it.
Approached as a work of inspirational fiction, the novel offers readers a clear moral compass without sacrificing narrative momentum or emotional nuance. It rewards those who appreciate character-driven storytelling, modest romance, and the steady light of faith guiding difficult decisions. Without revealing the outcomes, it is fair to say that The Red Signal provides the satisfactions of resolution earned through integrity rather than convenience. In turning its pages, readers encounter a world where courage whispers before it shouts, where ordinary rooms become stages for brave acts, and where a timely warning can become the first step toward a life reordered by truth.
Synopsis
The Red Signal opens with a young woman from a respected household moving through a season of social obligation and emerging uncertainty. Her city is bright with parties, expensive cars, and carefully managed reputations, yet small disquieting details trouble her. A literal red signal—a stoplight halting traffic on a rain-polished avenue—becomes a quiet emblem for hesitation and warning. Family expectations push her toward a celebrated circle, while recent changes in fortune make alliances feel urgent. Early scenes place her between comfort and alertness, introducing a motif of caution that threads through chance meetings, overheard remarks, and the first hint that danger may touch fashionable rooms.
An introduction arranged by relatives brings her into contact with a charming, well-connected suitor whose influence extends into business and society. His attention seems both flattering and strategic, and his friends move with practiced ease among gala guests and private back offices. Around the same time, a quiet acquaintance, encountered in an unpretentious setting, conveys an unadorned warning: not everything in her circle is what it claims to be. The red signal shifts from streetlight to conscience, suggesting a line she should not cross. Without accusing anyone outright, early chapters sketch a network of obligations and favors that might mask less visible transactions.
Subtle incidents accumulate. A telephone call ends abruptly when she enters a room. An envelope changes hands at a benefit reception. A driver takes an unexplained detour at night. None, taken alone, proves anything, yet together they point toward invisible pressures. Through charitable errands she steps beyond her customary routes and sees how certain enterprises affect ordinary families. The contrast heightens her misgivings about the entertainments that now feel staged for purposes other than pleasure. When a plan is made for a lavish weekend, the arrangements appear unusually guarded. The narrative maintains discretion, yet the atmosphere tightens as boundaries blur.
A man of modest means and steady bearing, first noticed in a practical setting, becomes a consistent presence. He knows the city’s quieter corners, works with people who receive little notice, and speaks plainly about prudence and trust. He does not presume on her attention, but he does, at critical moments, ask her to pause. Their conversations are brief, often interrupted by public demands, but they introduce themes of responsibility, faith, and the cost of looking away. He recognizes patterns in recent events and, without melodrama, suggests she weigh invitations more carefully. His restraint provides a counterpoint to persuasive glamour.
As anticipation builds for a select gathering rumored to seal important understandings, she observes an unmarked car near her house at odd hours and receives an unsigned message urging caution. The phrase red signal recurs, this time as an intentional alert. She must decide whether to follow the evening’s program or alter it without explanation. Quiet preparations suggest that her movements are being noted. A minor accident, quickly dismissed, reveals an intent to isolate her at a particular moment. The sequence marks a turning point: by choosing caution, she inadvertently exposes the shape of a plan that had relied on her compliance.
Events prompt a temporary withdrawal to a simpler environment where she can think without surveillance. There she encounters practical kindness and a rhythm of work unlike her accustomed schedule. The pause allows connections to surface: a ledger entry glimpsed earlier, a name repeated in separate contexts, the alignment of social favors with profitable outcomes. Conversations illuminate effects of those arrangements on neighborhoods at the margins. The retreat is not a romantic idyll but a strategic interlude; it equips her to return with clearer priorities and allies who value lawfulness over convenience. The red signal, now fully symbolic, names boundaries she intends to keep.
Returning to the city, she cooperates discreetly with trustworthy figures to clarify what has been occurring behind polished doors. Without detailing tactics, the narrative moves through shadowed hallways, coded telephone exchanges, and a rendezvous that tests loyalties. A scheduled celebration becomes the stage on which competing intentions converge. Watching carefully, she recognizes the moment when personal safety intersects with public duty. The motif of the red signal appears once more as a literal light used to time movements, underscoring the interplay of caution and action. A crisis forms that requires immediate decisions, summoning the calm persistence modeled by her quiet ally.
The outcome reshapes several relationships. Some acquaintances distance themselves as publicity threatens reputations; others step forward, relieved that ambiguity has ended. Family conversations, long postponed, finally take place with new frankness about money, influence, and trust. The suitor’s poise is tested under scrutiny, and the woman measures his claims against observable fact. The steadfast acquaintance neither boasts nor retreats; he simply continues to do what he believes right. Institutional authorities assume their roles, and while specific consequences remain offstage, the sense of a turning point is clear. The narrative preserves suspense while acknowledging that hidden arrangements seldom remain hidden.
The Red Signal concludes with a composed affirmation rather than spectacle. Having learned to recognize warnings—both visible and inward—the protagonist accepts a framework of choices shaped by conscience, compassion, and reverence for what is just. The book’s central message is not merely to stop at danger, but to discern why the signal appeared and to choose a path aligned with truth, even when costly. Without disclosing final particulars, the closing pages suggest a future oriented toward service and integrity, informed by lessons drawn from a season of risk. The red signal endures as a guidepost, cautioning and protecting in equal measure.
Historical Context
Set in the interwar United States, The Red Signal unfolds in the urban-suburban corridor of the Northeast, a milieu of streetcars, boardinghouses, churches, and rapidly modernizing main streets. The period immediately following World War I saw telephones, electric lights, and automobiles enter middle-class life, while cities like Philadelphia, New York, and their satellites set cultural pace. Offices, department stores, and civic clubs structure the daily world, and railway timetables and new traffic signals regulate movement. The novel’s social spaces—respectable parlors, downtown offices, and shadowed city corners—reflect a society balancing postwar optimism with anxiety about crime, political unrest, and changing gender roles in the years around 1918 to the mid 1920s.
World War I (1914–1918) decisively shaped American society. The United States entered the conflict on 6 April 1917, mobilizing roughly 4.7 million service members; 116,516 Americans died before the Armistice of 11 November 1918. Demobilization in 1919 brought factory reconversion, layoffs, and the readjustment of veterans to civilian life, spurring the formation of the American Legion in March 1919. War bonds, food conservation campaigns led by Herbert Hoover, and Gold Star families left civic imprints in every town. The Red Signal mirrors this transition, portraying communities negotiating honor and loss, and young adults pressed to define duty, career, and faith amid the uncertainties that followed the sudden end of global war.
The First Red Scare (1919–1920) intensified anxieties about radicalism after the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution. A wave of strikes, including the Seattle General Strike in February 1919 and the Boston Police Strike in September 1919, coincided with anarchist bombings, one destroying Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer’s Washington home in June 1919. Palmer’s General Intelligence Division, led by a young J. Edgar Hoover, orchestrated nationwide raids in November 1919 and on 2 January 1920, detaining thousands and deporting some on the USS Buford. The novel’s language of warning and its concern with hidden influences echo this climate, reflecting fears of subversion and the demand for moral steadiness within civic and private life.
Temperance culminated in national Prohibition with the Eighteenth Amendment, ratified on 16 January 1919, and the Volstead Act, passed on 28 October 1919 and enforced from 17 January 1920. The Bureau of Prohibition sought to police production and sale, yet bootlegging networks, speakeasies, and corruption flourished from New York to Detroit and Chicago. Figures such as Al Capone gained power in the mid 1920s, while the dry versus wet divide split neighborhoods, newspapers, and churches. The Woman’s Christian Temperance Union and the Anti-Saloon League, led by strategist Wayne B. Wheeler, sustained moral rhetoric alongside legal enforcement. The Red Signal aligns with this milieu, dramatizing the social costs of intoxicants and nightlife and urging personal restraint as a civic safeguard.
Women’s citizenship and public roles expanded sharply with the Nineteenth Amendment, ratified on 18 August 1920, after sustained activism by the National Woman’s Party under Alice Paul and Lucy Burns and by state-by-state suffragists. Wartime labor drew women into factories and offices; by the early 1920s growing numbers worked as stenographers, clerks, and teachers. The 1921 Sheppard–Towner Act signaled new federal concern for maternal and infant health. Simultaneously, flapper fashions and social freedoms advertised a modern female independence. The Red Signal reflects these currents by presenting a competent young woman negotiating work, family, and courtship, while testing the boundaries of autonomy and propriety that many readers, churches, and civic groups debated in the wake of the franchise.
Urbanization and technology reshaped daily life. The 1920 census recorded that 51.2 percent of Americans lived in urban areas for the first time. Automobiles multiplied as the Model T’s price fell to about 260 dollars by 1925; registrations rose from about 8 million in 1920 to over 23 million by 1929. Cities installed controls to tame speed and congestion: Cleveland activated an electric traffic signal in 1914, and Detroit’s police officer William Potts devised a three-color system in 1920. Telephones, roughly 10 million in service by 1920, tightened social networks while exposing new risks. The novel’s imagery of movement and stoppage, of crowded streets and guarded thresholds, draws on this regulated yet perilous urban modernity.
The influenza pandemic of 1918–1920 imposed trauma and introspection. An estimated 50 million deaths worldwide included approximately 675,000 in the United States. Municipalities shuttered schools, theaters, and even churches; mask ordinances and quarantine orders unevenly enforced public health. Philadelphia’s Liberty Loan parade on 28 September 1918 became infamous as cases surged afterward, overwhelming hospitals. Families faced sudden bereavement and economic precarity, while charitable and church networks organized relief for orphans and the ill. The Red Signal resonates with this environment of vulnerability and service, invoking neighborly duty, the unpredictability of mortality, and the ethical urgency that public crises impressed upon young urban households emerging from war into fragile peace.
As social and political critique, the book frames the interwar city as a testing ground where class privilege, commercial vice, and political fear collide with civic virtue. It exposes the ease with which prosperity and novelty, cars, bright streets, illicit clubs, mask predation and corruption, and it insists that law, faith, and community must restrain private appetites. Prohibition-era temptations, red-scare anxieties, and the commodification of women’s labor form the pressures against which characters choose. By elevating conscientious work, charitable obligation, and sober judgment over status or thrill, the narrative indicts a culture willing to risk the vulnerable for amusement and reminds readers that security depends upon everyday moral self-government.
The Red Signal
CHAPTER I
Hilda Lessing stood hesitating fearfully before the wide expanse of railroad tracks that seemed to be fairly bristling with menacing engines, some moving, some standing still. In her bewilderment she could not be sure which were moving and which were standing still. They all seemed alive; waiting to pounce upon her if she stirred.
The conductor had told her, when he put her off the express, that the other train made good connection, and she had no time to waste. He had pointed across all those tracks, and across them she must go. She made a wild dash, accomplished half the distance, and suddenly found herself snatched from the very teeth of a flying express that had appeared like a comet out of the mêlée, and held in strong arms against a bit of rail fence that traversed the space between the tracks for a little distance.
It seemed ages that she clung with trembling arms to a big rough shoulder, her body pressed against the fence, one hand still gripping the suitcase jammed between her and the fence, while an interminable train rushed, car after car, past her reeling brain, the hot breath of its going blasting her cheeks. To add to the horror, another train dashed into sight on the other side of the frail fence and tore along in the opposite direction. She felt like a leaf in a crevice with a great roaring avalanche on either side. If she should let go her feeble hold of the rescuer for a single instant, or if he failed her, she was lost. Her horrified eyes were strained and fascinated with the fearful spectacle till it seemed she could bear it no longer; then she closed them with a shiver and dropped her face to the broad blue jean shoulder that offered the only relief.
The strong arms seemed to hold her closer with a reassuring pressure that comforted her. The rushing of the train was growing less as if some spell had it within control now, and she felt herself lifted and borne swiftly beyond the noise and confusion. She dared not open her eyes until he put her down upon a quiet bench at the far end of the platform away from the crowds.
She dimly felt that people were looking curiously, excitedly, after her, and that the trainmen, with startled faces, were calling out something to her companion; but she paid no heed to any of them. She only saw his face bending solicitously over her, his pleasant eyes so brown and merry, and heard his cheery voice:
“Say, kid, that was a close call! Didn't you know any better than to cross those tracks with both fliers due? Where was the station man, I'd like to know, that he let you start?”
“Oh!” gasped Hilda, turning whiter than ever. “I didn't know! I couldn't find a way across, and I had to make my train!” Then the tears came in a flood of nervous reaction and she dropped her face into her hands and sobbed.
The man in the blue overalls sidled up to her in dismay and put his big arm awkwardly around her, forgetful of his amused comrades not far away.
“There! There! Kid! Don't cry! It's all over, and you're perfectly safe!”
He patted her slender shaking shoulders gently with his big blackened hand, and looked helplessly down at the girl.
“What train were you meaning to take?” he asked with sudden inspiration.
Hilda lifted a pair of drenched blue eyes, large and wide, with a new fear, and started to her feet.
“Oh! The train to Platt's Crossing[1]! Has it gone? I ought to hurry! Which way do I go?”
The young man looked at his watch. He had nice hair and a handsome head. She liked the way the dark curl fell over his white forehead, and the strength of the bronzed neck above the jumper.
“You’ve plenty of time. Number ten isn't due for fifteen minutes. Come over to the restaurant and have a cup of coffee. That'll put some pep into you.”
He seized the suitcase and led the way. She noticed that he did everything as if he were a gentleman. She liked the way he pulled out the chair and seated her at the table. He gave an order for sandwiches, coffee, baked apples and cream. It looked good to her after a night and morning of fasting.
“Do you live at Platt's Crossing?” His brown eyes were fixed pleasantly, respectfully upon her.
“No! That is—I live in Chicago—or I did till father died. I'm going to work at Platt's Crossing.”
She spoke as if it were an unpleasant fact that had not yet become familiar enough to lose the pain of its expression.
“You look young to go to work,” he said kindly, interestedly. “What line? Telephone girl or stenography?”
The color stole up under her clear skin.
“Neither,” she said bravely. “It's a truck farm[2]. They're Germans my uncle knows. I'm to help. Housework, I suppose. I'm going to try to like it, but I wanted to teach. I had finished high school and was going to normal next fall if father hadn't died. But something happened to our money and I had to take this place. Mother's got a place as matron in an orphan asylum, where she could take my little brother with her. It isn't very pleasant, but it was the best that we could do.”
“That's tough luck, kid!” said the young man sympathetically, “but brace up! If you've got it in you to teach you'll get your chance yet. Are you German?”
“No,” said the girl decidedly. “Father was. He was born in Germany. He liked this country, though, and didn't keep running hack to Germany every year the way my uncle does. But mother and I are Americans. Mother was born in Chicago.”
“Well, you'd better keep your eyes open, kid! Those German truck farms have been getting a bad name since the war broke out. There are lots of spies around just now. You can't tell what you may come across.”
There was a twinkle of fun in his eyes, but a strain of earnestness in his voice. The girl looked at him in wide-eyed wonder.
“You don't suppose there would be any such thing as that?” she asked, dropping her spoon. “I thought spies were just newspaper talk. Our high school teacher used to say so.”
“Well, there are plenty of spies around all right!” be said seriously. “It's not all newspaper talk. But don't you worry. It isn't likely they'll come around you, and you might not know them for spies if they did.”
“Oh! I should be so frightened!” she said, her hand fluttering to her throat. “What do people do when they discover spies?”
“Just lie low and send word to Washington as quick as they can. But don't look like that, kid; I was just talking nonsense!”
She tried to answer his smile with another.
“I know I'm silly,” she said contritely, “but it seems so dreadful to come to this strange place among people I don't know anything about.”
“Oh, you'll come out all right. It won't be so bad as you think. They'll likely turn out to be fine.”
She took a deep breath and smiled bravely.
“I don't know what mother would say if she knew I was talking to you,” she remarked anxiously.
“She brought me up never to speak to strange young men. But you've been so kind saving my life! Only I wouldn't like to have you think I'm that kind of a girl———”
“Of course not!” he said indignantly. “Anybody could see that with a glance. I hope you haven't thought I was fresh, either. I saw you were all in and needed a little jollying up. I guess those two expresses sort of introduced us, didn't they? I’m Dan Stevens. My father is—has a position—that is, he works on the railroad, and I'm engineer just at present on number five freight. I'll be glad to be of service to you at any time.”
“My name is Hilda Lessing,” said the girl shyly. “You certainly have been kind to me, I shan't ever forget that I would have been killed if it hadn't been for you. I guess you might have been killed, too. You were very brave, jumping in between those trains after me. I shan't feel quite so lonesome and homesick now, knowing there's someone I know between Platt's Crossing and Chicago.”
“Oh, that wasn't anything!” said the young man lightly. “That’s part of the railroad business, you know. But say! It's rank to be homesick![1q] Suppose I give you a signal as I pass Platt's Crossing. I get there at 2:05 usually, unless we're late. It will maybe cheer you up to let you know there's somebody around you know. I’ll give three long blasts and two short ones. That'll be to say: ‘Hello! How are you? Here's a friend!’ I know where that truck farm is, right along the railroad before you get to the bridge, about, a quarter of a mile this side. There isn't much else at Platt's Crossing but that farm. We stop to take on freight sometimes. Here, tell you what you do. If everything's all right and you think things are going to go you just hang a towel or apron or something white out your window, or on the fence rail somewhere. I'll be watching for it. That will be like saying: ‘I'm very well, thank you.’ Won't that make you feel a little more at home?"
“It certainly will. It will be something to look forward to,” said Hilda smiling shyly. “I shan't be half as much afraid if I know there is somebody going by to whom I could signal if I got into trouble. Of course, I know I won't, but you understand.”
“Of course,” said the engineer rising. “That’s all right. If you get into trouble or find that spy or anything, you can hand out a red rag for a danger signal, and then I'll know there is something that needs to be looked after. See? Now, I guess we had better beat it. It's time for that train of yours. I'm glad to have met you. You're a mighty plucky little girl and I honor you.”
He pushed back his chair and picked up the suitcase. She noticed again the ease of every movement, as if he were waiting on the greatest lady in the land. Then the train boomed in; he put her on, found a seat for her, touched his greasy cap with courteous grace and was gone. A moment more and she was started on her way to Platt's Crossing.
She paid little heed to the landscape by the way, for she was going over and over again all that had happened since she set her first timid step across that labyrinth of tracks, and was caught from sudden death by the strong arms of the young engineer. Various sensations that had hardly seemed to register at the time now came back to make her heart leap and her pulses thrill with horror or wonder or a strange new pleasure. How strong he had been! How well he had protected her, with never a quiver of his sturdy frame while those monster trains leaped by! How little and safe and cared-for she had felt in spite of her fear! And how thoughtful he had been, taking her to get some lunch and planning to cheer her up a little on her first lonely day at the new home! Perhaps mother would not quite think that was proper, for she had warned her many times to have nothing to do with strange young men, but, then, mother surely would understand if she could see him. He was a perfect gentleman, if he did wear blue jean overalls: and besides, they would never likely see each other again. What possible harm could a whistle and a white towel banging out a window do? He wouldn't likely do it but once, and, of course, she wouldn't; and it was pleasant to feel that there was someone to whom she could appeal if anything really frightened her, which, of course, there wouldn't. And, anyhow, he had saved her life and she must be polite to him.
It seemed ages since she had left her mother and little brother the day before to start on this long journey into the world. She seemed to have come a lifetime in experience since then. What would it be like at the farm? Was she going to like it, or was it going to be the awful stretch of emptiness that she had pictured it ever since Uncle Otto had told her she was to go? Somehow, since she had talked with the young engineer there was just the least bit of a rift in the darkness of her despair. He had said that if she had it in her to teach she would get her opportunity. Well, she could be patient and wait. Meantime, it was pleasant to think of that handsome young man and the courteous way in which he had treated her. He reminded her of a picture she had once seen of a prince. True, he was not dressed in princely robes, but she was American enough to recognize a prince in spite of his attire.
She still had the dream of him in her mind when she got out at Platt's Crossing and looked around bewildered at the loneliness of the landscape.
There was nothing more than a shanty for a station, and the only other building in sight was a dingy wooden house across some rough, plowed fields, with a large barn at a little distance from it.
She looked about in dismay for something else to guide her, and perceived a man coming toward her. He was attired in brown jeans with an old straw hat on his head, and he was as far as possible from any likeness to the young man who had put her on the train. Idealism soaring high and sweet above her head suddenly collapsed at her feet and she went forward to meet the stolid-looking man.
There was no kindly greeting, no lighting of the face, nor twinkling of the little pig eyes. She might have been a plow or a bag of fertilizer just deposited, for all the personality he allowed to her. He asked her if she was the girl from Chicago in much the same way he would have looked at the markings on some freight to be sure it was his before he went to the trouble of carrying it home.
Hilda had a shrinking notion that he was rather disappointed in her appearance. He pointed across the plowed ground to the forlorn house in the distance and told her she could go on up, they were waiting for her; as if it were her fault that she had not been there before.
Hilda picked up her heavy suitcase, looked dubiously at the long, rough road before her and glanced at the man. He had apparently forgotten her existence. He made no effort to carry her burden for her. With a sudden set of her firm little chin and a keen remembrance of the strong young engineer who had carried it so gallantly a little while before, she started bravely on her way, slowly, painfully toiling over the rough ground, and in her inexperience taking the hardest, longest way across the furrows.
The stolid woman who met her at the door with arms akimbo, furiously red face and small blue eyes that observed her apprizingly was a fit mate for the man who had directed her to the house. She gave no smile of welcome. Her lips were thin and set, though she was not unkindly. Hilda gathered that her coming had not been exactly looked forward to with pleasure, and that her presence was regarded more in the light of an unpleasant necessity than that of a companionable helper, as her uncle would have had her think.
“So! You’ve come!” Said the woman in a colorless voice.
“Yes!” said Hilda. “Is this Mrs. Schwarz?”
The woman nodded, meantime giving her closer scrutiny.
“You ain't so strong!” she announced sternly, as if the girl were somehow defrauding her of what she had a right to expect.
Hilda put down her suitcase and straightened her slender back, tilting her delicate chin just a shade.
“I'm never sick,” she said coldly. She looked regretfully back across the rough way she had come to the friendly railroad tracks gleaming in the distance and wished she dared turn and flee. Then she saw the stolid man moving heavily across the field, and turned back to her fate.
“You can take it up to your room,” the color-less voice directed, pointing to the suitcase. “Up the stairs und the first door in front. Ged in your vork cloes und cum down und help me. I haf mooch to do!”
Hilda fled up the stairs. A sudden desire to cry had stung in her eyes and crowded into her throat. She must not break down now, just at this first hour in her new home and before her employers.
She drew the door shut and noticed with joy that there was a lock. She turned the key softly and went to the one little window, looking out stealthily. Yes, it was on the side of the house toward the railroad track, whether front or back she could not tell, the house was of so nondescript a fashion. But her heart rejoiced that at least she would not have to manoeuvre and contrive to fling out her signal.
Opening her suitcase she took out a little white apron and hung it out the window by its strings. She removed her hat, bathed her face, smoothed her hair, and changed her dress for a neat school gingham. She was about to go downstairs when a low distant rumble broke on her ear. Hurrying to the window, she knelt on the floor and looked out. Yes, it was a freight train winding far down the valley, coming up the shining steel track. Was it his train? Would he remember to look or would he not expect her to have the signal ready before tomorrow?
Forgetful of her waiting mistress and the new duties below stairs, she knelt and watched the train crawl like a black writhing serpent up the track; and just as it drew near and was almost in front of her window the voice of her mistress sounded raucously up the passageway with insistency:
“I haf told you to hurry! You should cum down at vonce!” The tinge of German accent was stronger under excitement.
“Yes, in just a minute, Mrs. Schwarz!” called Hilda, turning her head excitedly from the window to answer. At that instant the clear piercing shriek of the whistle sounded forth:
——————!——————!——————!————!———!
