"And here is something for your trouble."
It was a gold note for fifty dollars. George's brain became nearly as dry as his tongue. Even as he folded the bill and tucked it into a pocket the train began to slow down. He swooped up the luggage and staggered out into the corridor, where he was obliged to hug the partition to permit the lady coming out of the dressing-room to pass. The train stopped. He helped the two women to alight, dumped the luggage, and jumped aboard, dropping the trap and running back to the vacant compartment for the mysterious box. Military! His brain was as full of kinks as his wool. But there was one clear idea in his head—nothing could prevent him delivering this box to the man in compartment 1.
"Fo' de lan' sakes!" he murmured. "Ef dat lady 'ain't went an' fo'got de kimono!"
With the mysterious box under one arm and the rose-kimono under the other, he sallied forth.
Meanwhile, on the platform of the One Hundred and Twenty-fifth Street station, there was enacted a scene of tenderness and animation. The woman who had forgotten her kimono rushed into the arms of another woman, statuesque, white-haired. Her face, alight with joy, was beautiful; but there was a subtle hint that in repose it would be tragic.
"My Hilda! My Hilda!" She spoke in an alien tongue.
"Darling mother!" in the same tongue.
A dapper little man with a Semitic cast of countenance began to dance about the two.
"Here, here. Stop that lingo! It sounds too much like German, and we'll be held up. Mother Nordstrom, you must remember!"