Elsmere obligingly followed to the platform and suffered himself to be given into the custody of the station agent, to whom he presented his petition for food.
“A little weak in the upper story,” explained the conductor. “His ma had about as many as she could manage and gettin’ off at Edgewater she forgot this one. Name’s Peters, stayin’ with old Mis’ Peters, two miles from Edgewater. You wire ’em to meet the express, and then you pass him back. Tell McWhire not to let him get to sleepin’. He ain’t an easy proposition, when he’s gone to 31 Bylow, now I tell you,” and the conductor of No. 5 swung himself aboard.
Elsmere had the time of his life in the two hours before the arrival of the noon express. The station agent was a sociable soul. He had a guinea-pig in a box, so delightful to observe that Elsmere forgot his desire for zwieback and became conversational. He told the agent the history of the polly-wogs he had raised “till they was all froggies, only one was deaded.” He showed the place where he had cut his finger in the mower-lawn. He explained how fond he was of back-horse-saddle-riding, and declared his intention of some day having “frickers,” caressing the agent’s own sandy growth with great admiration. He tried to perform on the telegraph instrument and cried “Boo” with all his strength at a lady, peering in at the ticket window. Altogether, Elsmere found traveling very much to his taste. The noon express stopped for a minute, he was thrust aboard the last car, and a few minutes later, according to instructions, the newsboy put him off at Edgewater, with a cheery:
“Here y’are, Bub, and there’s Ma and Gramma.”
Elsmere had taken a fancy to the newsboy and did not at all wish to stop at Edgewater. He ran down the track after the retreating train, howling miserably.
As for “Ma and Gramma,” they had been overtaken by the dispatch just as they were starting 32 to drive out to the farm, and had come in great perplexity to the station. The wailing baby running down the track suggested nothing to them, and the agent could give them no satisfaction. He was locking up his office. There was not another train to stop till No. 5 should return toward evening. So, still bewildered, Mrs. Peters and her mother-in-law gave up their fruitless errand and drove away, taking with them a problem for a lifetime’s pondering.
Elsmere, as the train vanished around a curve, sat down on the track for a while and listened to his own howls. Tiring of that amusement presently, he strolled back to the station. Outwardly it looked much like that hospitable one where he had enjoyed life earlier in the day. This one, however, offered no entertainment beyond wandering about the platform and the unoccupied waiting-room. Across the street was a little restaurant. There were pies in the window.
Elsmere obeyed the summons.
“Pie,” he said, presenting his nose to the edge of the lunch counter.
“Don’t you monkey with anything,” snapped a girl from behind the counter.