and all the rest of’em hello for me when you get to Boston…. And remember me to your father and Luke when you get to Baltimore…. Good-bye, Gene—I’ve got to leave you now. Good luck, son,” and with a friendly grip of his powerful hand he turned to go. “You folks come over sometime—all of you,” he said in parting. “We’d like to see you.” And he went away.
At this moment, all up and down the platform, people had turned to listen to the deep excited voice of a young man who was saying in a staccato tone of astounded discovery:
“You don’t mean it!… You swear she did!… And you were there and saw it with your own eyes!… Well, if that don’t beat all I ever heard of!… I’ll be damned!” after which ejaculation, with an astounded falsetto laugh, he looked about him in an abstracted and unseeing manner, thrust one hand quickly and nervously into his trousers pocket in such a way that his fine brown coat came back, and the large diamond-shaped pin of the Delta Kappa Epsilon fraternity was revealed, and at the same time passing one thin nervous hand repeatedly over the lank brown hair that covered his small and well-shaped head, and still muttering in tones of stupefied disbelief—“Lord! Lord!… What do you know about that?” suddenly espied the woman and her two children at the other end of the platform, and without a moment’s pause, turned on his heel, and walked towards them, at the same time muttering to his astonished friends:
“Wait a minute!… Some one over here I’ve got to speak to!… Back in a minute!”
He approached the mother and her children rapidly, at his stiff, prim and somewhat lunging stride, his thin face fixed eagerly upon them, bearing towards them with a driving intensity of purpose as if the whole interest and energy of his life were focussed on them, as if some matter of the most vital consequence depended on his reaching them as soon as possible. Arrived, he immediately began to address the other youth without a word of greeting or explanation, bursting out with the sudden fragmentary explosiveness that was part of him:
“Are you taking this train, too?… Are you going today?… Well, what did you decide to do?” he demanded mysteriously in an accusing and challenging fashion. “Have you made up your mind yet?… Pett Barnes says you’ve decided on Harvard. Is that it?”
“Yes, it is.”
“Lord, Lord!” said the youth, laughing his falsetto laugh again. “I don’
