Name: ___________________________

Date: ___________________________

2020-2021 English II Unit 3 CUA Test ID 90346

Purple and Fine Linen

by Anna Brownell Dunaway

1 There was a 15-minute wait at the little transfer station at Junction City. Pauline begrudged every
second of it. The wedding ceremony of her friend was set for 8:00. That would barely give her time to
greet the family and slip into her peach taffeta bridesmaid’s gown.

2 She moved restlessly about the dingy little waiting room, nibbling a chocolate bar. There would be no
time to snatch even a bite after she got there. The candy would have to sustain her until the wedding
ceremony was over. The dinky little local she was about to board did not have a diner. That was what one
got for traveling to out-of-the-way places like Weeping Water. Pauline smiled disdainfully as she repeated
the name half aloud. What a teary sound it had, suggestive of funeral wreaths and weeping willows rather
than a wedding.

3 Pauline was an Easterner and city-bred to the core. She had never lived away from the rumble of
streetcars and the noise of traffic. She had a hazy idea that country folk and small-town dwellers spent
their days milking cows and gathering eggs. The stares of the loungers and the sights and sounds of a
village depot grated upon her sensibilities. She moved impatiently to the window and laid down her purse,
ticket, and gloves for a moment, while she powdered her nose before the lid of her pigskin case.

4 “Excuse me”—it was a low voice at her elbow—“but is this your glove? I picked it up under one of
the seats.”

5 Pauline snatched it with an annoyed gesture. “Why, yes, I believe it is mine, thank you.” She was
proverbially careless, perhaps because things came to her so easily that they gave her no sense of
responsibility. Now reminded of her shortcomings, she took a hasty inventory of her belongings. Bag, silk
umbrella, gloves, ticket, fitted traveling case—all at hand. Would the train never come? It was already
overdue. She tapped the floor impatiently with her foot, clad in its immaculate mole oxford.

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 6 “I believe I hear the local whistling now.” It was the same friendly voice. Pauline turned and observed
the girl to whom it belonged. Then she looked away with an almost imperceptible lift of her eyebrows.
These familiar people in wayside stations, always trying to essay conversation! Evidently, a little native on
her way to “weekend” with somebody, as the local newspapers would put it. Her plain blue serge suit had
a homemade look to Pauline’s fastidious eye, and although it was the first day of September, the girl wore
a straw hat.

7 If there was anything in which Pauline was not careless, it was the purple line of convention that
marked the times and seasons of wearing apparel. She was smugly conscious of the becoming lines of her
twill suit of mole brown, with its hat of velour to match. Pauline was an unconscious snob in the matter of
dress. She was wont to measure people by a certain rigid standard, which meant for her purple and fine
linen.

8 She picked up her traveling case. People were hurrying out of the station. Pauline, anxious to get a
seat in the train where Pullman accommodations were not to be had for love or money, followed in their
wake, counting over her belongings as she went. Yes, she had them all: traveling case, gloves, handbag,
umbrella—

9 “Where to, miss?”

10 “Weeping Water,” said Pauline haughtily. She made her way down the aisle and dropped into what
she mentally termed a “stuffy” red plush seat. Well, anyway, there was the consolation that it wouldn’t be
long now. A few hours’ ride and then her destination, and all the fascinating excitement of a wedding.

11 And Joan’s people were real gentlefolk. Her father had given up a career as a surgeon in a big city to
stay on in the little town and carry on the practice that his father had had before him. Pauline felt that she
could safely approve of Joan’s family. Not that Joan could dress as she did—not on a country doctor’s
salary—but she felt she could make much of nothing. She had an air that placed her in the purple-and-
fine-linen class. Joan would look like a duchess in her wedding gown. Her thoughts switched to her own
peach taffeta—peach, green, and lavender. What delicate shades—a regular rainbow wedding.

12 “Excuse me”—the deprecating voice again, with its friendly intonation—“is this your handkerchief? I
found it in the aisle.”

13 “Why, I believe it is. Thank you.” Pauline took it frigidly. The shabby little girl at the junction waiting
room again. She seemed to be a veritable Nemesis, popping up everywhere with lost articles. Pauline was
annoyed that the girl still hesitated in the aisle, swaying with the jerking motion of the train.

14 “Your ticket, madam.”

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 15 Pauline recalled her eyes from the window with a start. The girl had taken her seat. The conductor
stood there waiting. She had forgotten all about the ticket. Mechanically, she reached into her handbag.
The ticket was not there.

16 The conductor cleared his throat impatiently. Pauline turned out the contents of her bag in a
heterogeneous heap: handkerchiefs, powder puff, cards, small change—but no tiny square of cardboard.
She went through the various pockets frantically, even though she knew, with the calmness of conviction,
that her ticket reposed on the window sill in the waiting room at Junction City. Now that she was miles
away from it, she saw it as clearly as when she laid it there. Slowly, she returned the things to her bag.

17 “I—haven’t my ticket,” she said composedly, opening her purse. “I remember now that I left it in the
waiting room at Junction City.”

18 The conductor eyed her coldly. “The fare,” he said, making a note in his book, “is three dollars and
87 cents. If you haven’t your ticket or its equivalent, you will have to get off at the next stop.”

19 “But you don’t know who I am,” gasped Pauline. “My father is William J. Sherman, of the Sherman
Trust Company—”

20 “Can’t help it.” The conductor was moving down the aisle. He pulled the bell cord. “Next stop’s
Pender. You get off there.”

21 “Pender—Pender—Pender-r-r!”

22 The brakeman passed down the aisle, calling the name raucously. He stopped and lifted her traveling
case. The train came to a standstill. Glowering, the conductor waited on the platform. Pauline walked
uncertainly down the aisle, her eyes blurred with tears. She felt the eyes of the whole car upon her.

23 “Wait a minute.” It was the fresh, sweet voice of the girl of the waiting room. She stood on the top
step holding a blue silk parasol with ivory tips. “Isn’t this yours? I was deep in a book and only just saw
you getting off. Is this your station? I thought you were going to Weeping Water.”

24 “Conductor put ’er off,” explained the brakeman laconically. “Lost her ticket—no money—”

25 “You lost your ticket?” cried the girl incredulously. “I remember seeing it in the window of the waiting
room at Junction City.”

26 “All aboard,” called the conductor. The brakeman doffed his cap.

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 27 “Wait!” cried a ringing voice. “Stop!” It held an authoritative note. “Put her back on. I have money. I
will pay her fare. Why, it’s an outrage, putting a girl off like this!” The girl reached down her hand to
Pauline, who was keeping pace with the barely creeping train. The brakeman, grinning, swept her up,
suitcase and all. Pauline clung to the girl’s hand as if to a lifesaver. Curiously enough, at this moment she
had the sensation of being beyond her depth in a river, and that someone was holding water wings to her.

28 The girl loosened her hand and tendered a crisp bill to the conductor. He handed her back the change
with an impervious smile.

29 “This way,” said the girl, leading Pauline through the rear of the car behind them. “Everybody will be
craning their necks in that other one. We’ll just sit here.”

30 “But you don’t know me,” cried Pauline, finding her voice, and regarding the other in amazement.
“How can you trust me like this—a perfect stranger? And I was so horrid!”

31 “I grew up on the prairies,” the girl said with a smile, “where everything is open and frank like the
plains themselves. No jungles, or swamps, or hidden ugly things. And I always know intuitively whom I
can trust.” She took out another crisp bill and laid it in Pauline’s hand. “You’ll need it before you get
home,” she insisted.

32 “Your name then, and address,” said Pauline with the suspicion of a choke in her voice.

33 “Nellie Newton, Herington, Kansas.”

34 “Street and number?”

35 “Only that,” Nellie said with a laugh. “Oh, we don’t have to be labeled out West.”

36 Pauline scribbled rapidly. After all, she must have been mistaken in her vision of water wings. It must
have been an angel instead. She said earnestly, “I’ll make this up to you—oh, I will!”

37 “Of course,” murmured the girl simply. She turned to the window with an involuntary exclamation.
“Oh, see! The sun is setting over there in the west. Isn’t it beautiful?”

38 Pauline followed her gaze. Used as she was to city spires and skyscrapers, she was rather
disappointed to see only fleecy, airy clouds tinged with blue, green, and purple, like myriads of rainbows.
But there was something about its quiet beauty that held her.

39 “Few things,” spoke up Nellie suddenly, “can equal a prairie sunset.”

40 “Unless it be,” said Pauline with sincere homage, “a daughter of the prairies.”

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 41 The train thundered into the little station 35 minutes behind time. Pauline scrambled into a bus—she
had written Joan not to meet her, as she had been undecided about her time of leaving. The house was in
a bustle of preparation, and so she went straight to her room, stopping only for a hurried peek at the
bride.

42 When she had slipped into the peach taffeta and had joined the wedding party at the head of the
stairs, the strains of Lohengrin’s Wedding March were floating up to them from below. Pauline fell into
step beside the bridesmaid in green. Then she gave such an undignified jump as to slow for a moment the
stately procession. For there, marching ahead of the bride, very erect and very sweet in her gown of
lavender taffeta, was the maid of honor, and she was no other than the little traveling companion who had
paid her fare!

43 Their eyes met in recognition. The bridesmaid in green intercepted the look.

44 “Isn’t Joan’s cousin a dear?” she whispered. “And doesn’t she wear lavender well?”

45 Pauline nodded absently, for she was thinking of something she had wrested from the prairies that was
the nicest thing she had ever put in her memory box. It was that better far than outward apparel is the
purple and fine linen of the heart and mind.

Public Domain

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 from The Awakening
by Kate Chopin

1 Edna had attempted all summer to learn to swim. She had received instructions from both the men
and women; in some instances from the children. Robert had pursued a system of lessons almost daily;
and he was nearly at the point of discouragement in realizing the futility of his efforts. A certain
ungovernable dread hung about her when in the water, unless there was a hand near by that might reach
out and reassure her.

2 But that night she was like the little tottering, stumbling, clutching child, who of a sudden realizes its
powers, and walks for the first time alone, boldly and with over-confidence. She could have shouted for
joy. She did shout for joy, as with a sweeping stroke or two she lifted her body to the surface of the
water.

3 A feeling of exultation overtook her, as if some power of significant import had been given her to
control the working of her body and her soul. She grew daring and reckless, overestimating her strength.
She wanted to swim far out, where no woman had swum before.

4 Her unlooked-for achievement was the subject of wonder, applause, and admiration. Each one
congratulated himself that his special teachings had accomplished this desired end.

5 “How easy it is!” she thought. “It is nothing,” she said aloud; “why did I not discover before that it
was nothing. Think of the time I have lost splashing about like a baby!” She would not join the groups in
their sports and bouts, but intoxicated with her newly conquered power, she swam out alone.

6 She turned her face seaward to gather in an impression of space and solitude, which the vast expanse
of water, meeting and melting with the moonlit sky, conveyed to her excited fancy. As she swam she
seemed to be reaching out for the unlimited in which to lose herself.

7 Once she turned and looked toward the shore, toward the people she had left there. She had not
gone any great distance that is, what would have been a great distance for an experienced swimmer. But
to her unaccustomed vision the stretch of water behind her assumed the aspect of a barrier which her
unaided strength would never be able to overcome.

8 A quick vision of death smote her soul, and for a second of time appalled and enfeebled her senses.
But by an effort she rallied her staggering faculties and managed to regain the land.

Public Domain

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