ehow, this girl that
looked like the one I mean brought my mind back to my wife with a quick
turn, after I had forgotten her in my talk with Melford for the time
being. I thought how lonely she was in that little house of ours in
Cambridge, on rather an outlying street, and I knew she was thinking of
me, and hating to have me away on Christmas Eve, which isn't such a
lively time after you're grown up and begin to look back on a good many
other Christmas Eves, when you were a child yourself; in fact, I don't
know a dismaler night in the whole year. I stepped out on the platform
before I began to turn in, for a mouthful of the night air, and I found
it was spitting snow--a regular Christmas Eve of the true pattern; and I
didn't believe, from the business feel of those hard little pellets,
that it was going to stop in a hurry, and I thought if we got into New
York on time we should be lucky. The snow made me think of a night when
my wife was sure there were burglars in the house; and in fact I heard
their tramping on the stairs myself--thump, thump, thump, and then a
stop, and then down again. Of course it was the slide and thud of the
snow from the roof of the main part of the house to the roof of the
kitchen, which was in an L, a story lower, but it was as good an
imitation of burglars as I want to hear at one o'clock in the morning;
and the recollection of it made me more anxious about my wife, not
because I believed she was in danger, but because I knew how frightened
she must be.

"When I went back into the car, that girl passed me on the way to her
stateroom, and I concluded that she was the only woman on board, and her
friends had taken the stateroom for her, so that she needn't feel
strange. I usually go to bed in a sleeper as I do in my own house, but
that night I somehow couldn't. I got to thinking of accidents, and I
thought how disagreeable it would be to turn out into the snow in my
nighty. I ended by turning in with my clothes on, all except my coat;
and, in spite of the red-hot stoves, I wasn't any too warm. I had a
berth in the middle of the car, and just as I was parting my curtains to
lie down, old Melford came to take the lower berth opposite. It made me
laugh a little, and I was glad of the relief. 'Why, hello, Melford,'
said I. 'This is like the old Holworthy times.' 'Yes, isn't it?' said
he, and then I asked something that I had kept myself from asking all
through our talk in the smoking-room, because