While the travelers from the East, bound for Fairlands, were waiting at
the Junction for the local train that would take them through the orange
groves to their journey's end, the young man noticed the woman of the
observation car platform with her two companions. And now, as he paced to
and fro, enjoying the exercise after the days of confinement in the
Pullman, he observed them with stimulated interest--they, too, were going
to Fairlands.

The man of the party, though certainly not old in years, was frightfully
aged by dissipation and disease. The gross, sensual mouth with its
loose-hanging lips; the blotched and clammy skin; the pale, watery eyes
with their inflamed rims and flabby pouches; the sunken chest, skinny neck
and limbs; and the thin rasping voice--all cried aloud the shame of a
misspent life. It was as clearly evident that he was a man of wealth and,
in the eyes of the world, of an enviable social rank.

As the young man passed and repassed them, where they stood under the big
pepper tree that shades the depot, the man--in his harsh, throaty whisper,
between spasms of coughing--was cursing the train service, the country,
the weather; and, apparently, whatever else he could think of as being
worthy or unworthy his impotent ill-temper. The shadowy suggestion of
womanhood--glancing toward the young man--was saying, with affected
giggles, "O papa, don't! Oh isn't it perfectly lovely! O papa, don't! Do
hush! What will people think?" This last variation of his daughter's
plaint must have given the man some satisfaction, at least, for it
furnished him another target for his pointless shafts; and he fairly
outdid himself in politely damning whoever might presume to think anything
at all of him; with the net result that two Mexicans, who were loafing
near enough to hear, grinned with admiring amusement. The woman stood a