Mr. Beebe so hated Mr. Wilkins that he made it a regular practice to stop at the station after his day’s work was done, to wait for this particular train. Silent and unfriendly, he would loaf in the station for an hour and a half, and the station master dared not put him out, for he was possibly an intending passenger on the train as far as the next flag-station, which was a railroad crossing a mile and a quarter further on. Mr. Beebe never bought a ticket from Mr. Wilkins, on the occasions when he did ride. He paid his way on the cars, five cents, plus ten cents rebate-check, and this rebate-check he redeemed at Mr. Wilkins’s office the next day. Furthermore, he made a point of going out just before the train arrived, and waiting on the other side of it to get in, so that Mr. Wilkins could not tell whether he boarded the train or walked off through the thick woods that crowded down to the very edge of the line.
Thus it happened that as the train arrived on the evening of the first of May, Mr. Beebe, being on the farther side of the track from the railroad station, saw an Irish nurse blunder helplessly off the platform in front of him, holding a six months’ old baby in her arms, and stand staring straight before her in evident bewilderment. Mr. Beebe accosted her in all kindness:
“Your folks got off the other side, I guess. This here ain’t the right side for nobody, only me.” Then he prodded the baby with a large and horny finger. “How old will that young ’un be?” he inquired.
“Six months, sorr,” replied the nurse; “gahn on seven.”
“Is that so?” said Mr. Beebe, with polite affectation of interest. “Folks been long married?”
“Wan month, sorr,” replied the nurse.
“Which?” inquired Mr. Beebe.
“Wan month, sorr,” replied the nurse.
* * *