Out of the groups of impatient people that flanked the track she saw a dozen little pecking reunions, where some one dashed wildly into the long, narrow stream of travelers and yanked out his special friend or relative, like a good-natured bird of prey. She saw a tired, worn, patient-looking woman step forward with four noisy little boys, and then stand dully waiting while the Young Electrician gathered his riotous offspring to his breast. She saw the Traveling Salesman grin like a bashful school-boy, just as a red-cloaked girl came running to him and bore him off triumphantly toward the street.
And then suddenly, out of the blur, and the dust, and the dizziness, and the half-blinding glare of lights, the figure of a Man loomed up directly and indomitably across the Youngish Girl"s path--a Man standing bare-headed and faintly smiling as one who welcomes a much-reverenced guest--a Man tall, stalwart, sober-eyed, with a touch of gray at his temples, a Man whom any woman would be proud to have waiting for her at the end of any journey. And right there before all that hurrying, scurrying, self-centered, unseeing crowd, he reached out his hands to her and gathered her frightened fingers close into his.
"You"ve--kept--me--waiting--a--long--time," he reproached her.
"Yes!" she stammered. "Yes! Yes! The train was two hours late!"
"It wasn"t the hours that I was thinking about," said the Man very quietly. "It was the--_year_!"
And then, just as suddenly, the Youngish Girl felt a tug at her coat, and, turning round quickly, found herself staring with dazed eyes into the eager, childish face of the Traveling Salesman"s red-cloaked wife. Not thirty feet away from her the Traveling Salesman"s shameless, stolid-looking back seemed to be blocking up the main exit to the street.
"Oh, are you the lady from British Columbia?" queried the excited little voice. Perplexity, amus.e.m.e.nt, yet a divine sort of marital confidence were in the question.
"Yes, surely I am," said the Youngish Girl softly.
Across the little wife"s face a great rushing, flushing wave of tenderness blocked out for a second all trace of the cruel, slim scar that marred the perfect contour of one cheek.
"Oh, I don"t know at all what it"s all about," laughed the little wife, "but my husband asked me to come back and kiss you!"