He looked down thoughtful at the little chap who was lying there, contented, going here and there with his fists, and looking up at the lights as if he was reflecting over the matter some himself.
"The conductor," said the Brother-man, "would telegraph, and most likely find the mother. If he was efficient enough, he might even get her arrested. And what earthly good would that do to the child? Our concern is with this little old man here, with his life hanging on his shoulders waiting to be lived. Isn't it?" he asked, simple. And in a minute, he added: "I always hoped that this would never happen to me—because when it does happen, there's only one thing to do: Keep them." And he added in another minute: "I don't know—I ought to look at it that I've been saved the trouble of going out and finding a way to help—" only you understand, his words came all glossy and real different from mine.
I tell you, anybody like that makes all the soul in you get up and recognize itself as being you; and your body and what it wants and what it is afraid of is no more able to run you then than a pinch of dirt would be, sprinkled on your wings. Before I knew it, my body was keeping quiet, like a child that's been brought up well. And my soul was saying whatever it pleased.
"I'm a woman," I said, "and alone in the world. I'm the one to take him."
"I'm alone in the world too," he said, "and I'm a man. So I'm just as able to care for him as you are. I'll keep him."
Then he looked down the car, kind of startled, and began smiling, slow and nice.
"On my word," he said, "I'd forgotten that besides being a man I'm about to be a guest. And this little old chap wasn't included in the invitation."
I looked out the window to see where we were getting, and there we were drawing over the Flats outside Friendship Village, and the brakeman came to the door and shouted the name. When I hear the name that way, and when I see the Fair ground and the Catholic church steeple and the canal bridge and the old fort and the gas house, it's always as sweet as something new, and as something old, and it's something sweeter than either. It makes me feel happy and good and like two folks instead of one.
"Look here," I said, brisk, "this is where I get off. This is home. And I'm going to take this baby with me. You go on to your visiting place—so be you'll help me off," I says, "with my baby and my bundles that's for half of Friendship Village."
"Friendship Village!" he said over, as if he hadn't heard the man call. "Is this Friendship Village? Why, then this," he said, "is where I'm going too. This is where the Proudfits live, isn't it?" he said—and he said some more, meditative, about towns acting so important over having one name and not another, when nobody can remember either name. But I hardly heard him. He was going to the Proudfits'. And without knowing how I knew it, I knew all over me, all of a sudden, who he was: That he was the Novel-and-Poem man himself.