He was aroused from his gloomy abstraction by something tugging at his riding-crop and, turning his eyes he beheld a little curly-headed tot leaning over the back of the seat ahead of him. She was perhaps about three years old, and her blue eyes were sparkling with determination as she pulled at the leather thong with all her baby strength, in a desperate effort to possess herself of the desired treasure.
Benton’s moody face immediately softened with a friendly grin. He loved children and they instinctively came to him without fear.
“Hello, Sis,” he said. “You want it?” and he surrendered the coveted plaything, which she immediately started to flourish with great glee. The mother, a thin, shabbily dressed, careworn-looking young woman about thirty, looked on with a loving smile that glorified her poor, pinched face.
“Oh, Nellie, Nellie,” she said reprovingly; “you mustn’t—you’ll hit somebody” and she turned to Benton, saying, “I hope my little girl isn’t worrying you?”
“Not a bit—not a bit,” he returned cheerily. “Kids are welcome to tease me any old time.”
Scrambling down from her perch, the little one gazed at his uniform with lively interest and tentatively tapped his boots and the rowels of his spurs with the crop. “Toldier,” she lisped, and without more ado she climbed up beside him on the seat and, putting her little arms around his neck, gave him a genuine loving hug and kiss which fairly took him by storm and caused broad laughs of amusement to come from those sitting near.
The touch of those baby lips awoke a strange longing in the heart of the lonely man, and a dreamy, far-away look momentarily softened his hard face. To have a comfortable home to come back to every night, and not to be chased around here, there, and everywhere at the whims of the powers that be. To be happily married to a loving girl-wife, and have kiddies that would climb all over you, and run after you, and where you could lie on the sands, in the sun, by the sea, somewhere, and watch ’em playing—
A sudden exclamation from the mother awoke him sharply from his reverie.
“What’s the matter?” he asked. She seemed terribly agitated. “Oh!” she said; “I’ve lost my hand-bag, and my ticket was in it and some money!”
“Were you sitting here all the time since you got on the train?” he inquired.