George Riley protested vigorously: "But I tell you she's only a little girl and she's got a baby and a big basket and I don't know how many other things and some one's just got to help her!"
With anxious headshakes Terence and Janet McFadden corroborated all George Riley said, but the gatekeeper was firm. "Only passengers this side the fence," he repeated.
So the three friends had to wait while the long train slowly disgorged. Terence stood guard on one side of the gate, George Riley on the other, while Janet pressed a tense searching face through the bars of the high division fence. The first arrivals were the dapper quick young men with new leather bags and walking-sticks who, in their eagerness to arrive, always drop off a train before it stops. After them came more men and the more agile of the women passengers. Then the general rush and crush: the fussy people laden down with parcels; old ladies struggling to protect their small handbags from the assaults of porters; distracted mothers jerking their broods hither and thither; middle-aged men murmuring to wives and daughters, "No rush! No rush! Plenty of time!"
"Maybe she missed the train!" Janet McFadden suggested tragically.
The crush subsided, the last stragglers passed through the gate, and then, just as Janet remarked gloomily, "Well, I was perfectly sure she wasn't coming!" a little girl with a baby in her arms alighted from a coach far down the track and stood where she was while the conductor piled the ground about her with boxes and parcels and baskets innumerable.
"There she is! There she is!" Janet and Terence cried out together.
The gatekeeper looked at them a little less sternly. "Well, I guess you can come in now."
Janet dashed through the gate with her arms raised high, calling out a joyful "Rosie! Rosie!" George Riley and Terence followed close on her heels, and in a moment Rosie and the baby were enveloped in a cloud of hugs and kisses.
"Oh!" Rosie gasped, "but it's nice to be back! And I'm so glad to see you all!... Here, Jarge, you take that heavy box and be awful careful. It has jelly in it and canned fruit and I made them all myself, too! Your mother taught me how.... You take the big basket, Terry. That's our clothes. And I think you can take the basket of vegetables in the other hand. Janet'll take that bundle, won't you, Janet? They's two dressed chickens in it and I plucked them myself, too. Mis' Riley showed me how. And you take the shoe-box, Janet. It's full of cookies. Hold it straight so's not to break them.... I'll take that last basket in my other hand. You can't guess what's in it, can they, Geraldine? It's Geraldine's little pussy cat! We just couldn't leave it, could we, baby? Geraldine named it herself. She named it Jarge."
"After me, I suppose," George said, and they all laughed as if this were a mighty fine joke.