“How long do you want me to wait?” demanded the girl.
“Only about seven or eight years or so!” haltingly explained Martin.
Nora leaped to her feet and stamped the floor, angrily, imperatively.
“You’d keep me waiting seven or eight years; waiting that long for you, with all the risk! Not me! Not for a thousand Martins!”
That was her answer. We left her without more words. We left her watching us, crying. Martin commented, when we were outside:
“Now, if she’d only had more faith in me and made me feel certain of victory, maybe I’d given the whole thing up; but now—we’ll go tomorrow, sure!”
The following evening we sat in the North Station in Boston, awaiting the train that would carry us on an all-night journey. Every nerve Martin possessed quivered with pessimism. He scolded, chided, lodged complaints at everything and everybody. He tried to give me the impression that I had made a prisoner of him; that he no longer had any initiative of his own. As we sat in the waiting room he held humorous monologues the purport of each one being, “What a fool I am, at my age, to be running out among a lot of kids to get ready for college. What a fool!” During that hour’s wait, he had resolved four times to expend that fifty dollars in a ticket to the orange groves of California. Finally, when he had been brooding in silence for some moments, with a quick action he pulled out his pocket book, handed it to me and said, savagely, “Here, take this and keep it safe. No matter how I beg or what I say, don’t let me have it. To make things sure, you’d better run and get me my ticket to the school; then I’ll be sure and not turn back!”
As our train started from the station it plunged into a heavy, blinding snow-storm that had been raging throughout the entire day. Once in our seats, Martin recommenced his tirades against this “foolishness.” But there were propitious signs near at hand, for his encouragement. A man was coming down the aisle looking for a seat in whom I recognized a Seminary comrade of mine. He was a stubby fellow of middle age, with an ill-kept, drooping moustache.
“Say, Harlan, old fellow,” I greeted, “stop right here and meet my cousin.” When he was seated, I talked with him, and, for Martin’s benefit, to whom I slyly winked as I talked, brought out the fact that Harlan had been much older than my cousin when he had started out for an education. Nay, he had been handicapped with a wife and a child! Now he enjoyed the dignity of the ministerial profession. The moral was evident to Martin. He braced up and became very agreeable, especially to my old friend Harlan.
We talked in low tones until three o’clock in the morning, at which time the brakeman called out the station where I should leave Martin to his fortunes. The poor fellow seemed on the verge of tears as he gripped his suit-case and followed me to the door as the train slacked up its speed. I looked off from the platform. The storm had not abated. I could see only a great snowdrift where the station platform should have been. A street light flickered weakly out on the street.