Several hours later he awoke as the train rumbled over the reverberating timbers of the approach to Boston. He gazed sleepily through the misty window at the familiar environs of the city. He felt strangely uncomfortable and out of place as he stepped to the station platform and moved toward the gates with the shuffling crowd about him. The reek of oil and steam from the pulsating engine was particularly disagreeable. Several people glanced at him curiously as he came out on the street.
He shook himself together, and boarding a car sat gazing moodily at the opposite window. How flat and squalid the buildings appeared. How insignificant and how generally alike the people. They seemed to lack individuality and forcefulness, these pallid, serious-faced regulars of the civilian army of wage-getters. His native city had never appealed to him in this way before. It was vast, of course; but its vastness was a conglomeration of little things that produced the impression of size. The wide sweep of the hills about Lost Farm and the limitless horizon of the free woodland spaces came to him in sharp contrast, as he turned his thoughts to the present need that had brought him back to his home.
“A bath and a good sleep will straighten me out,” he thought.
As the car stopped beyond a cross-street he got off and walked toward a hotel.
“My baggage is at the North Station,” he told the clerk, as he registered and handed his checks to him. “Send it to my room when it comes.”
“That man’s sick,” said the clerk, as David disappeared in the ascending elevator. “Writes a good hand,” he remarked, turning the register toward him. “David Ross, Boston. Hum-m. But you can’t always judge by the clothes.”
About three o’clock that afternoon, David appeared at the hotel desk with a small parcel in his hand. “I shall be here a day or two, perhaps longer. I’m going to have a few things sent. You may have them put in my room.”
“Yes, sir,” replied the clerk, somewhat impressed by David’s manner. “I’ll send them right up.”
David strolled to the door and paused, gazing listlessly up and down the street. Then he stepped out, crossed the Common, and walked down the long hill toward his aunt’s house. When he arrived there the maid ushered him immediately to the cosy living-room.
“Miss Ross is out, Master David, but she expects you, and your room is ready.”