The train came at last, when every one about the station had collapsed into an attitude of having given it up entirely, and Emily forgot her long wait in the joy with which she rushed forth to greet her husband. She saw his big figure emerging from the last coach on the train. His hat was pulled down to his brows, and he looked out upon the desolate scene that the little station presents to the traveler who enters Grand Prairie by that road, with the crossness of a passenger whose train with almost human perversity had been losing time ever since it started. When he saw Emily he did not quicken his pace, though he walked on in her direction, with a long face that told her he was entitled to her pity and sympathy for all that he had to endure in life. She ran toward him, and he bent his head that she might embrace his neck and kiss him. She clung there an instant, and when she released him his eyes were searching the barren platform.
“Nobody else here?” he asked.
“Why, no, dear—who would——”
“Isn’t Pusey here?”
“Pusey?” she repeated, in surprise. But Garwood made no answer. He was thinking of the old days when he was always met by Rankin, and usually by half a dozen of Rankin’s followers gathered together to give éclat to the congressman’s home-coming. But now there was no one to meet him but Emily.
He insisted upon a carriage to be driven home in, saying the ride from Olney in the common coach had nearly killed him, and when, above the rattle of the old hack’s windows, Emily said:
“I’m so glad to have you home again,” her last words somehow expressed the whole situation against which his nature was in revolt, and he cried out:
“Yes, home again! Nice time to be called away from Washington! What are they all trying to do here now, do you know?”
“They seem,” Emily replied, “to be trying to defeat you for a third term.”
“Well, I sometimes wish they’d succeed,” said Garwood; “sometimes I get sick of this whole business of politics, and wish——”