e that fact
from the first. She wanted to put that boy and his mother between them.
Her husband and child stood between them, too. He took that cue in
answering.

"Yes; I've run over hurriedly on business. And are you alone, too?"

She glanced toward the empty compartment where her bags were stowed in
the overhead racks, and her books and illustrated papers lay on the
cushions. "I'm on my way to join my--" It was her turn to color.

He nodded quickly, to show that he understood.

"He's in Biarritz," she hurried on, for the sake of saying something.
"I'm to meet him in Paris. I wasn't coming over at all this spring. I
wanted to stay with the children at Towers--"

It was a safe subject. "How were the children when you left?"

"Tom was all right; but Chippie has been having the same old trouble
with his tonsils. They'll have to be cut again."

"I thought so the last time I saw him. And he's growing too fast for his
strength, poor little chap. I notice," he added, gazing at her more
intently than he had as yet permitted himself to do, "that he begins to
look like you."

She smiled for the first time. "Oh, but _I_ think he looks like _you_."

"No; Tom takes after me. He's a Walker. Chippie's--"

"A darling," she broke in. "But he's not strong. Ever since he had the
scarlet fever--"

"Yes, I know. But it might have been worse. We might have lost him. Do
you remember the night--?"

She put her hand to her eyes as if to shut out the vision of it. "Oh,
that awful night! And you were more afraid than I was. Mothers are
braver than fathers at times like that."

"It was watching the fight he put up. Gad, he was plucky, the poor
little chap! And he was only three, wasn't he?"

"Three and five months."

"And he'll be eleven his next birthday. How the years fly! By the way,
won't it soon be time for Tom to be going to boarding-school?"

They were being pushed and jostled by guards and passengers. Between
sentences it was necessary to make room for some one going or coming.
She was obliged to step back into her compartment. Having taken the seat
in the corner by the window, she motioned with her hand toward that in
the opposite corner by the door. In this way they were separated by the
length and width of the compartment, the distance marking the other
gulf between them.

She continued to talk of the children, looking at first into the
cavernous obscurity of Crewe station, through which they were dashing,
and the