A congestion of traffic at Fifth Avenue and
Forty-second Street halted their taxi for a few moments, and here in the
thick of it Carley had full assurance that she was back in the metropolis.
Her sore heart eased somewhat at sight of the streams of people passing to
and fro. How they rushed! Where were they going? What was their story? And
all the while her aunt held her hand, and Beatrice and Eleanor talked as
fast as their tongues could wag. Then the taxi clattered on up the Avenue,
to turn down a side street and presently stop at Carley's home. It was a
modest three-story brown-stone house. Carley had been so benumbed by
sensations that she did not imagine she could experience a new one. But
peering out of the taxi, she gazed dubiously at the brownish-red stone
steps and front of her home.
"I'm going to have it painted," she muttered, as if to herself.
Her aunt and her friends laughed, glad and relieved to hear such a
practical remark from Carley. How were they to divine that this
brownish-red stone was the color of desert rocks and canyon walls?
In a few more moments Carley was inside the house, feeling a sense of
protection in the familiar rooms that had been her home for seventeen
years.
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