As Martin dropped up to his knees in the snowdrift and reached for his suit-case I whispered:
“Find a hotel, and let me hear from you, old fellow. Keep up your courage. If there’s anything I can do, call on me!” Harlan waved his hand and called, “Never too late to mend!” an aphorism which might have been pertinent to the occasion, and then the brakeman’s lantern swung. As the train lumbered through the drifts, I saw Martin bend his head to the storm, lift his suit-case above the drifts, and go plodding towards the street light. The station was deserted, and I hoped that my cousin would find some one to direct him before the storm discouraged him.
A few months later, I stopped off at the town where I had left my cousin. He met me at the train, the same serious man I had left, though with a trace of a smile on his face and more of content in his speech than before. He guided me past a grocery store and said:
“I get up at four in the morning, do my studying, then before classes I go out and take orders for that firm.”
He led me down a placid street, through the shovelled paths of snow, and after opening the front door led me into a well-warmed and very nicely furnished chamber.
“I do their chores and earn the rent for this room,” he announced, with a grim smile. “Furnace to look after, paths to shovel, and baby to keep happy, if it wakens when they want to go to an entertainment.”
At supper time he led me into the heart of the town into an eating-house. He had a meal ticket punched by the waitress.
“This ticket costs three dollars,” he said, “enough to last a week at three meals a day. I make it last three weeks by scrimping and having a bottle of milk a day in my room.”
“How do you like the school?” I asked, pleased with these evidences of his thrift.
“Well,” he mused, “they are a lot of kids, to be sure, and I’m quite a freak among them. ‘Grandad’ Martin they call me. I suppose they’ve never had so old a man in their classes before. Anyhow, that’s the way you would argue from their looks and talk. But it doesn’t bother me—much. I guess we’ll all get used to it, by and by.”