“You goin’ home for Kis’mus?” she said, cuddling into his lap. Finding he had no friends to visit, no little girls to play with, she said she was “drefful sorry.” Then she told him about the delights of “gwanpa’s” when all the uncles and aunts and cousins were assembled. When she got out at Stonington, he felt a great loss. And now, as he walked the platform at the Junction, waiting for another train, he was somehow conscious of a strange and unusual loneliness. It was two days before Christmas. All day he had seen jubilant family groups at stations welcoming their arriving relatives; all day he had heard talk of home-coming and Christmas gifts among children and grown-ups on the train. John James Alston, I am sorry to say, became decidedly cross. “I was stupid,” he told himself, “to start anywhere on business at this season. I might just as well have waited till next week, and avoided all this nonsense.” And he wished himself back again in his cozy bachelor apartments in New York.
His meditations had carried him thus far when somebody seized his hands. “Aren’t you Uncle John from the West?” cried a girl’s voice. And a boy’s chimed in: “Of course it’s Uncle John! How do you do, Uncle John?” Then childish accents uttered, “I know’d him by his picshur!” And hurrying across the platform, a stout, cheerful woman pushed the children aside, crying, “John Damon! And you wrote you didn’t think you could come!” Then she shook him by both hands and kissed him impulsively.
John James Alston caught his breath. The woman was so wholesome and hearty, though she did wear a thick shawl and an unfashionable bonnet, that—well, he collected himself and managed to say, “Madam, there’s a mistake”; but she didn’t hear or pay the slightest attention to what he said.
“Billy, bring the horse around, quick,” she commanded. “It’s ten minutes before the other train comes. We’ll just have time to get away. Old Griggs’ll never get over being scared of the cars,” with a smile to John James. “Dolly, don’t hang on to your uncle so. Maidie, can’t you get her away?”
“Want my nuncle to carry me,” declared Dolly, the smallest girl, clinging to John James’s immaculate glove. He looked down. The face that looked up was dimpling and sweet in its worsted hood, and golden curls peeped out all around it. He never was able to explain the impulse that moved him, and what followed was a wonderment to him all his life; but the protest died on his lips, and he picked up the smallest girl and hugged her. Then and there he shook off John James Alston as he left the dismal Junction platform, and, as “Uncle John” from the West, submitted to be led to the waiting carryall.
“Get right in on the back seat,” said the cheerful woman. “Maidie, you an’ Dolly can sit back there, too. I’ll drive. Or, no—Billy can drive.” Sarah’s grammar was not quite up to the mark but you can hear the like of it in the country any day.
They piled in jubilantly and pulled up the buffalo-robes. John James’s dress-suit case was in the way, and he told Billy to put his feet right on it and never mind!
“Won’t your brother Asher be glad to see you!” exclaimed the woman. “Le’ ’s see—it’s full ten years, if ’tis a day, sence you came East. How is everything in Cheyenne?”
John James assured her that Cheyenne was all right.
“You must ’a’ be’n lonesome sence Annie died. Pity you never had any children. Home wouldn’t be home to me without children.”