When the three had reached the little station that like a hen covering her brood nestles low at the very foot of the hill, with the glistening metal rails passing on one side and the glittering, dimpling, rippling river flowing by on the other, John Lawton lifted his hat and kissed his daughters good-by with the careful courtesy habitual with him, and holding Sybil's hand a moment he said: "I—I shall walk over to The Beeches to-day, dear——"
"Papa!" exclaimed the girl.
"Yes," he went on; "I shall make my acknowledgments to Miss Morrell. You think she did a fine thing when she sympathized with and promised to help you, but she did a finer thing when she refused to ignore the parents—the old people, who are generally pushed to the wall in such cases. I shall thank her for her consideration, and——" but the roar of the approaching train sent the girls scurrying through the little waiting-room out to the platform and into the car. A pair of kisses were waved, and they had lost sight of the tall, slender, old gentleman.
And Sybil, as she sank into the seat beside Dorothy, exclaimed: "Is he not a dear? Is it not wonderful that this sordid poverty has not made him selfish, narrow-minded, sullen? Poor papa! Do you know, Dorrie, I'm afraid he suffers more than we imagine!"
"Oh!" cried Dorothy, "don't say that! I always thought papa was almost contented with things, except on our birthdays! But now we must love him more than ever, Sybbie!"
And to drive away the anxious look from her sister's eyes, Sybil called attention to the odd appearance of the car, which was almost filled with gentlemen, and remarked, laughingly: "We have taken what mamma calls 'the busy man's train.' They are a sociable lot, are they not—every man-jack of them with his nose in his paper, and a nice little wrinkle between his puckered brows?"
"That's from trying to get and keep the proper focus," laughed Dorrie, who added: "I've a five-cent nickel in my pocketbook, and I'll give it to you, Syb, if you can learn the color of a single pair of eyes in this car—barring mine, of course."
"Well, the nickel must be plugged or you wouldn't have it, so I'm not losing much; but, oh! after all, I may win it—plug and all! One male creature has eyes, for he has lifted them, and they are—are! Pass over the nickel, Miss, they are gray with black lashes, and—oh!"
She stopped in confusion, for the male creature she was watching had lowered his paper a moment, and she recognized the grave young man; and to herself she ruefully remarked: "And the third time's the charm!"
And though Dorothy busied herself in finding the despised nickel, her swiftly deepening color told her sister that she, too, had recognized their fellow-traveller whose calm features showed no trace of the surprised delight he felt at again seeing the face of the "violet-girl," as he termed her in his thoughts. He only gave a severe, scrutinizing glance at the shade of his window, carefully lowered it about an inch, and then returned to his paper, reading over and over and over again how a certain Mr. Somebody had become the benefactor of his race through selling shoes to men for three dollars a pair. Yet, in spite of his steady reading, he kept saying to himself how strange it was that the fair-faced Violet-Girl should cross his path on this the red-letter day of his life—the setting of whose sun would leave him so much better off financially than it had found him in the morning. And he could not help thinking how much sweeter his good fortune would seem if there was someone to share it with him.