This was one of the four daily rejuvenations that gladdened the heart of Mount Mark.
A man in a black business suit stood alone on the platform, his hands in his pockets, his eyes wandering from one to another of the strange faces about him. His plain white ready-made tie proclaimed his calling.
"It's the new Methodist preacher," volunteered the baggage master, crossing the platform, ostensibly on business bound, but really to see "who all" was there. "I know him. He's not a bad sort."
"They say he's got five kids, and most of 'em girls," responded the Adams Express man. "I've ordered me a dress suit to pay my respects in when they get here. I want to be on hand early to pick me out a girl."
"Yah," mocked the telegraph operator, bobbing his head through the window, "you need to. They tell me every girl in Mount Mark has turned you down a'ready."
But the Methodist minister, gazing away down the track where a thin curl of smoke announced the coming of Number Nine, and Prudence,—heard nothing of this conversation. He was not a handsome man. His hair was gray at the temples, his face was earnest, only saved from severity by the little clusters of lines at his eyes and mouth which proclaimed that he laughed often, and with relish.
"Train going east!"
The minister stood back from the crowd, but when the train came pounding in a brightness leaped into his eyes that entirely changed the expression of his face. A slender girl stood in the vestibule, leaning dangerously outward, and waving wildly at him a small gloved hand. When the train stopped she leaped lightly from the steps, ignoring the stool placed for her feet by the conductor.
"Father!" she cried excitedly and small and slight as she was, she elbowed her way swiftly through the gaping crowd. "Oh, father!" And she flung her arms about him joyously, unconscious of the admiring eyes of the Adams Express man, and the telegraph operator, and old Harvey Reel, whose eyes were always admiring when girls passed by. She did not even observe that the Slaughterhouse Quartette looked at her unanimously, with languid interest from out the wreaths of smoke they had created.
Her father kissed her warmly. "Where is your baggage?" he asked, a hand held out to relieve her.