“It is now one-fifty-one.”
“Oh, dear,” she sighed, and he saw that in the year which had intervened since he had seen her last, she had grown more distractingly pretty than ever—more mature and womanly. “Well,” she continued, her foot on the lowest step, “I suppose I may as well come in and sit down. This is the station, isn’t it?”
“This is the operator’s office,” he said. “The Byers station is that frame building you can just see up the track yonder.”
“It seems an awful way,” she remarked, gazing pensively in the direction of his gesture.
“It’s nearly half a mile; altogether too far for you to walk,” said Allan, with conviction.
“Oh, then I may stay here?”
“You certainly may,” Allan hastened to assure her, and placed his best chair at her disposal. “But it isn’t—well—palatial.”
She glanced around the dingy little room, with its rusty stove, its primitive lavatory, its rough, clapboarded walls, and then at the fresh-faced young fellow anxiously awaiting the verdict.
“It’s cosy,” she said, and settled herself comfortably upon the chair.
“I’m afraid I don’t keep it quite as tidy as I might,” said Allan, suddenly conscious that it was anything but tidy. “You see the old broom wore out, and we haven’t got a new one yet.”