"That's what we was wondering," says she.
Dick Dasher, he was lifting off bundles of laundry and stuff that's intrusted to him to bring home all along the line, and he heard me. "If you're to meet somebody, that's the man-you're-looking-for's private car," says he. "He's the only other one off here."
Land, there he was! As soon as I faced the man the porter had bowed off the step, I knew him. Stockier, redder in the face, with blunt gray hair and blunt gray mustache, and clothes that fit him like a label round a bottle—sure as could be, it was him!
"Well, Nick!" I'd been going to say; but instead of it what I did say was, "Is this Mr. Nordman?"
He lifted his hat in the hand with his glove on. "It's Calliope Marsh, isn't it?" says he. "I am glad to see you. Mighty good of you to meet me, you know."
I don't know how it was, but the way he was and the way he spoke shut me up tighter than a clamshell. It had never entered my head to feel embarrassed or stiff with him until I saw him, and heard him being so formal. My land, he looked rich and acted rich! The other women stood there, so I managed to introduce them. "You meet Mis' Arnet. You meet Mis' Sturgis. You meet Mis' Hubbelthwait," I says. "Them that was Hetty Parker and Mamie Bain and Cassie White—I guess you remember them, don't you?"
"Perfectly! Perfectly!" says he; and he done his heartiest, it seemed to me. But to bow quite low, and lift his hat higher and higher to each one—well, I dunno. It wasn't the way I thought it'd be.
"I thought we'd walk down," I says. "I thought mebbe you'd like to see the town—" But I kind of wavered off. All of a sudden the town didn't seem so much to me as it had.
"By all means," says he.
But just then there was above six-seven of them little boys found him. They'd got their papers now and they were bound to make a sale. "Paper? Buy a paper? Buy a newspaper, mister?" they says, most of them running backward in their bare feet right in front of him.