“Yessuh. Train don’t stop no minutes in Richmon’ though,” said the porter with a hard laugh, waving his little broom at some outlying freight cars they were passing. “Gittin’ in now. I got you’ bag on platfawm.”
“I don’t want to be brushed,” Henry said, almost sobbing. “For heaven’s sake, get out!”
Porters expect anything. This one went away solemnly without even lifting his eyebrows.
The brakes were going on.
One class of railway tragedies is never recorded, though it is the most numerous of all and fills the longest list of heartbreaks; the statics ignore it, yet no train ever leaves its shed, or moves, that is not party to it. It is time and overtime that the safety-device inventors should turn their best attention to it, so that the happy day may come at last when we shall see our common carriers equipped with something to prevent these lovers’ partings.
The train began to slow down.
Henry Millick Chester got waveringly to his feet; she rose at the same time and stood beside him.
“I am no boy,” he began, hardly knowing what he said, but automatically quoting a fragment from his forthcoming address to his father. “I have reached man’s estate and I have met the only——” He stopped short with an exclamation of horror. “You—you haven’t even told me your name!”
“My name?” the girl said, a little startled.
“Yes! And your address!”