discolored door-facing, she hurried
out to join her.

Lindsay did not at first connect the unusual crowd in and around the
little station with his sister's departure; but the young people at once
formed a circle around her, into which one and another older person
entered and retired again with about the same expressions of
affectionate regret and good wishes. He had known them all so long! But,
except for the growing up of the younger boys and girls during his five
years of absence, they were to him still what they had been since he was
a child, affecting him still with the old depressing sense of distance
and dislike. The grammarless speech of the men, the black-rimmed nails
of Stella's schoolmaster--a good classical scholar, but heedless as he
was good-hearted,--jarred upon him, indeed, with the discomfort of a new
experience. Upon his own slender, erect figure, clothed in poor but
well-fitting garments, gentleman was written as plainly as in words,
just as idealist was written on his forehead and the other features
which thought had chiselled perhaps too finely for his years.

The brightness had come back to Stella's face, and he could not but feel
grateful to the men who had left their shops and dingy little stores to
bid her good-by, and to the placid, kindly-faced women ranged along the
settees against the wall and conversing in low tones about how she would
be missed; but the noisy flock of young people, who with their chorus of
expostulations, assurances, and prophecies seemed to make her one of
themselves, filled him with strong displeasure. He knew how foolish it
would be for him to show it, but he could get no further in his effort
at concealment than a cold silence which was itself significant enough.
A tall youth with bold and handsome features and a pretty girl in a
showy red muslin ignored him altogether, with a pride which really quite
overmatched his own; but the rest shrank back a little as he passed
looking after the checks and tickets, either cutting short their
sentences at his approach or missing the point of what they had to say.
The train seemed to him long in coming.

His stepmother moved to the end of the settee and made a place for him
at her side. "Lindsay," she said, under cover of the talk and laughter,
and speaking with some difficulty, "I hope you will be able to carry out
all your plans for yourself and Stella; but while you're making the
money, she will have to make the friends. Don'