"Just so," the Professor smiled.
"It's my theory," frowned the Post Mistress, "that women should stand by women and men by men...."
"Your Theory," mused the Professor.
"And I practice it," declared the Post Mistress. "Only in this case I can't. Nobody could. What sort of woman is she, anyway? I can't understand her. She's rid of him and the child and the wind and the weather. She's back there where they say it's cool in the summer-time and warm in the winter, where the cold blasts don't blow, and the hot winds don't blister, and still she can't take time to sit down and write a little note to the father of her child."
She looked away from the window and Seth to the Professor, who wondered why it was he had never before observed the beauty of her humid eyes.
"I can't bear to see him walking up and down," she complained, "waitin' and waitin'. It disgusts you with woman-kind."
The wind blew the shutter to with a bang. It flung it open again. Some twigs of a tree outside tapped at the pane. A whistle sounded.
Seth turned glad eyes in the direction of the sound. The train!
There was the usual bustle. A man brought in a bag of letters, flung it down, sped out and made a flying leap for the train, which was beginning to move on. The Post Mistress busied herself with distributing the mail and Seth walked back and forth, waiting.
Presently he came in at the door, stood at the grated window back of which she sorted out the letters and then went out again.