"Don't ask me any more conundrums to-night. I'm going to bed, to get my beauty sleep."
"You must have had a great many, judging by the results."
Madame smiled as she bent to kiss his rough cheek. "Good-night, my dear. Think of some other pleasant things and say them to-morrow night to Mrs. Lee."
"I'll be blest if I will," Alden muttered to himself, as his mother lighted a candle and waved her hand prettily in farewell. "If all the distressed daughters of all mother's old schoolmates are coming here, to cry on her shoulder and flood the whole place with salt water, it's time for me to put up a little tent somewhere and move into it."
By the next day, however, he had forgotten his ill-humour and was at the station fully ten minutes before six o'clock. As it happened, only one woman was among the passengers who left the train at that point.
"Mrs. Lee?" he asked, taking her suit-case from her.
"Yes. Mr. Marsh?"
"Yes. This way, please."
"How did you know me?" she inquired, as she took her place in the worn coupé that had been in the Marsh stables for almost twenty years.