He was enough of a boy still to buy a box of candies to take to Hertha.
Calculating that his luncheon had cost him nothing and that he would
begin at once to save by smoking only one cigar a day, he spent a dollar
on his gift, and with it tucked under his arm moved among the seething
mass of faces, mysteriously upborne, on bodies with arms and legs, that
stampeded the Brooklyn train. Once hanging to his hardly secured strap,
contrary to the advice given him, he let the work of the day drop from
his mind and fell into a day dream of a home of his own with Hertha as
its queen. And as he thought of her, of her lightly poised head, her
softly curling hair, her delicate hands, the minutes flew by and he was
quite unconscious that he was standing amid a crowd of people, the women
swaying on the straps to which they clung, one of them falling regularly
against him at each station, the men endeavoring to read their
newspapers while they balanced themselves with each recurring jolt. He
was moving on as the train moved in a swift passage through time,
stopping now and again at some well-marked station along the happy road
of life.

As he neared his stopping place an old question came to perplex him. Who
was this girl whom he so deeply loved? Ogilvie was a fine sounding name,
and any one could see that she was descended from people of note. But he
was curious to know something of her kin and of her early life. It was
of no use to ask his mother or any of the folks at home. As he had once
put it to Hertha, they were "hill billies," far removed from her
progenitors. Mrs. Pickens had confessed ignorance when he had questioned
her. The one person who could tell him anything he dared not question.
There was something in Hertha's reserve that he was forced to respect,
and yet he often wondered that any girl should be so wholly alone. She
seemed to receive no mail. More than once, since she herself had first
spoken of him, he had alluded to her brother, only to be met with a shy
silence. He had never before known so silent a girl, or one, too, whom
it was so difficult to interest. Sometimes when he recalled the Rosies
and Annie-Lous at home over whom he had lorded it with the high hand of
the best-known fellow in the county, he wondered that he should be so
engrossed in one who was evidently indifferent to his advances. But he
was keen enough to see that, like his coveted riches, the needed effort
to gain her affection added to the int