"I am much obliged to you," said Catharine.

When she saw how young she was, the mulatto, a motherly body, took her
into a little inner snuggery used to store packages: "You can turn the
key, and sleep if you will until morning."

"I'll not close my eyes until my errand is done," thought Kitty, and
sat down in a rocking-chair, placing her satchel beside her. In five
minutes she was fast asleep. McCall, pacing up and down the platform,
could see her through the open window. He forgot to wonder why she had
come. There was a certain neatness and freshness about her which he
thought he had never observed in other women. After her night's travel
her dress fell soft and gray as though just taken from the fold, her
petticoat, crisp and white, peeped in one place to sight. How dainty
and well-fitting were the little boots and gloves! Where the hair was
drawn back, too, from her forehead he could see the blue veins and
pink below the skin, like a baby's. He did not know before what keen
eyes he had. But this was as though a breath of the old home when
he had been a child, one of the dewy Bourbon roses in his father's
garden, had followed him to the stifling town. It made the station
different--even the morning. Fresh damp winds blew pleasantly from the
reddening sky. The white marble steps and lintels of the street shone
clean and bright; the porters going by to the freight dépôt gave him
good-day cheerfully. In the window the old mulatto had some thriving
pots of ivy and fragrant geraniums. Even a dog that came frisking up
the sidewalk rubbed itself in a friendly fashion against his legs.

McCall suddenly remembered a journey he had made long ago, and a
companion whose breath was foul with opium as her head at night rested
on his shoulder.