m's
face was red, his expression--cold, and concentrated upon high
matters--scorned the stranger, and warned the lower classes that the
mission of this bit of gentry was not to them.

With but one sweeping and repellent glance over the canaille present,
he made sure that the person he sought was not in the waiting-room.
Therefore, he turned to the doors which gave admission to the tracks,
but before he went out he paused for an instant of displeasure. Hard by
the doors stood a telephone-booth, and from inside this booth a little
girl of nine or ten was peering eagerly out at William, her eyes just
above the lower level of the glass window in the door.

Even a prospect thus curtailed revealed her as a smudged and dusty
little girl; and, evidently, her mother must have been preoccupied with
some important affair that day; but to William she suggested nothing
familiar. As his glance happened to encounter hers, the peering
eyes grew instantly brighter with excitement;--she exposed her whole
countenance at the window, and impulsively made a face at him.

William had not the slightest recollection of ever having seen her
before.

He gave her one stern look and went on; though he felt that something
ought to be done. The affair was not a personal one--patently, this was
a child who played about the station and amused herself by making faces
at everybody who passed the telephone-booth--still, the authorities
ought not to allow it. People did not come to the station to be
insulted.

Three seconds later the dusty-faced little girl and her moue were sped
utterly from William's mind. For, as the doors swung together behind
him, he saw Miss Pratt. There were no gates nor iron barriers to obscure
the view; there was no train-shed to darken the air. She was at
some distance, perhaps two hundred feet, along the tracks, where
the sleeping-cars of the long train would stop. But there she stood,
mistakable for no other on this wide earth!

There she stood--a glowing little figure in the hazy September sunlight,
her hair an amber mist under the adorable little hat; a small bunch
of violets at her waist; a larger bunch of fragrant but less expensive
sweet peas in her right hand; half a dozen pink roses in her left; her
little dog Flopit in the crook of one arm; and a one-pound box of candy
in the crook of the other--ineffable, radiant, starry, there she stood!

Near her also stood her young hostess, and Wallace Banks, Johnnie
Watso