The young man’s voice had the same cultured intonation, and Gertrude, noticing it, supposed they must be immigrants fallen on hard times, and when she was sufficiently remote from the man who had jostled her, she turned to have another look at them. They had been joined now by an old man with bowed shoulders and a querulous, drawling voice, who spoke in rough tones, and was plainly just what he looked—an illiterate countryman; and the only noticeable thing about him was that the other two seemed to be in his command, and had to do his bidding.
The train came in at this moment, and, entering a car, she settled herself just behind a young man who had a five-years-old child on his knee.
Gertrude, having parted so recently from the little brood at Lorimer’s Clearing, was just in the mood for making friends with any child who crossed her path, and before ten minutes had gone by, had the little fellow in her arms, and was taking off the keenest edge of her home-sickness by amusing him.
Then the conductor passed up the car with an abrupt inquiry if there were a doctor on board.
“I am a doctor; what is wanted?” said the young man whose child Gertrude held.
“An old man has got a hurt and is bleeding heavily; wants binding up, or he’ll peg out,” answered the conductor, laconically, and then added, as if by an afterthought, “End car but one.”
“I’ll come,” said the young man, springing up; then, suddenly remembering the child, hesitated, looking at Gertrude.
“I will take care of the boy until you come back,” she said, answering the unspoken request, and smiling into the stranger’s face.
“Thank you,” he replied briefly; then laid his hand on the child’s shoulder, “Be a good boy, Sonny,” he said, and, lifting his hat to Gertrude, passed out of the car in the wake of the conductor.
“I always am a good boy,” explained the child, looking up into Gertrude’s face with innocent, candid eyes, “except when I am bad.”