Mr. Boyce settled the question by briskly reaching down for his bag. “All right! Please yourself,” he said. “I’ve got no more time to waste with you. I’ll do it myself.”
Before he had fairly lifted the valise from the ground, the irresolute Lawton made up his mind. “Put her down again, Hod,” he said. “I’ll manage it somehow.”
He took the half-dollar in his mittened hand, and tossed it gently up and down on the striped blue and white surface of yarn. “It’s the first money I’ve earned for over a week,” he remarked, as if in self-defence.
Even as he spoke, a young woman in black who had been wandering about in the dépôt yard came running excitedly up to him. She gave a little inarticulate cry of recognition as she drew near. He turned, saw her, and in a bewildered way opened his arms. She dropped her bundles and bandbox heedlessly into the snow, and threw herself upon his breast, hiding her face on his threadbare coat, and sobbing audibly.
Mr. Boyce had been entirely unprepared for this demonstration, and looked wonderingly upon the couple who stood in the path before him. After a moment or two of silent inspection he made as if to pass them, but they did not move. The girl still hid her face, although she had ceased to weep, and Lawton bent his head down over hers, with tears in his eyes and his gaze fixed vaguely on the snow beyond her, while he tenderly patted her shoulder with the hand that did not hold the half-dollar.
“All right, then, Ben,” Mr. Boyce called out. “If you’ll just let me pass, I’ll walk on. Have the things there by five.”
At the first sound of this voice, the girl raised her head. She turned now, her tear-stained face luminous with a deep, wrathful emotion, and looked at the speaker.
The young man did not for more than an instant try to meet this glance. His cheek flushed and his eyes sought the ground. He lifted his hand with a hurried, awkward gesture toward his hat, made a hasty plunge around them through the snow, and walked swiftly away past the gate into the dépôt.
The girl’s intent gaze followed the retiring Mr. Boyce until he disappeared. Then it shifted suddenly and fell upon the face of Ben Lawton, from whose embrace she had now withdrawn.
The poor man made no effort whatsoever to brave its searching and reproachful inquiry. He balanced the half-dollar on his mitten’s edge, watched the exercise with a piteously futile pretence of interest, and looked as if he was about to cry.