The suburban train was crowded when the girls reached it. Even the aisles were full of bundle-laden passengers, until the first few stations were past. Then Betty and Joyce found seats together, and a fat old lady good-naturedly drew herself up as far as possible, in order that Mary might squeeze past her to the vacant seat next the window.
"I can't set there myself, on account of the cold coming in the cracks so," she wheezed apologetically. "But young people don't feel draughts, and anyway, you can put your muff up between you and it if you do."
"Mary has a travelling companion after her own heart," laughed Joyce to Betty, as they watched the old lady's bonnet bobbing an energetic accompaniment to her remarks. "She's always picking up acquaintances on the train. She can get more enjoyment out of a day's railroad journey than some people get in a trip around the world."
"It is the same way at school," answered Betty. "You have no idea how popular she is, just because she is interested in everybody in that sweet friendly way."
They went on to talk of other things, so absorbed in their own conversation that they thought no more about Mary's. So they did not see that presently she turned away from her garrulous companion, and, wrapped in her own thoughts, sat gazing at the flying landscape. It was not at the snowy fields she was smiling with that happy light in her eyes, nor at the gleaming river. She was only dimly conscious of them and had forgotten entirely that it was the famous Hudson whose shore-line they were following. For once she was finding her own thoughts more interesting than the conversation of an unexplored stranger, although the old lady had taken her generously into her confidence during the first quarter of an hour. Indeed, it was one of those very confidences which had sent Mary off into her revery.
"I tell Silas that no one ever does keep Christmas just right till they get to be grand-parents like us, and have the children bringing their children home to hang up their stockings in the old chimney corner. 'Peared like, that first Christmas that Silas and me spent together in our own house couldn't be happier, but it didn't hold a candle to them that came afterwards, when there was little Si and Emmy and Joe to buy toys for. Silas says we get a triple extract out of the day now, because we not only have our enjoyment of it, but what we get watching our children enjoy watching their children's fun."
She reached forward and with some difficulty extracted a toy from the covered basket on the floor at her feet, a wooden monkey on a stick. "I'm just looking forward to seeing Pa's face when he drops that into Joe's baby's little sock."
Her own kindly old face was a study, as she slid the grotesque monkey up and down the rod, chuckling in pleased anticipation. And Mary, with her readiness to put herself into another's place, smiled with her, sharing sympathetically the anticipation of her return. Straightway in her imagination, she herself was a grandmother, going home to some adoring old Silas, who had shared her joys and troubles for over half a century.
Up to this moment she had been thinking that it could not be possible for any one to have a happier Christmas than she was having. A dozen times she had smoothed the soft fur of her boa with a caressing hand, and slipped back her glove to delight her eyes with the sight of her bloodstone ring, while her thoughts ran on ahead to the house-party towards which they were speeding. But the old lady's words had opened up a vista that set her to day-dreaming.
If by the road or by the hill or by the far seaway "he" should really come, some day, then of course the Christmases they would spend together would be happier than this. Jack had always said that she would have her "innings" when she was a grandmother. All her life Mary had been dreaming romances about other people, now in a vague sweet way those dreams began to centre around herself.