long, narrow stream of travelers and yanked out his special friend or
relative, like a good-natured bird of prey. She saw a tired, worn,
patient-looking woman step forward with four noisy little boys, and
then stand dully waiting while the Young Electrician gathered his
riotous offspring to his breast. She saw the Traveling Salesman grin
like a bashful school-boy, just as a red-cloaked girl came running to
him and bore him off triumphantly toward the street.

And then suddenly, out of the blur, and the dust, and the dizziness,
and the half-blinding glare of lights, the figure of a Man loomed up
directly and indomitably across the Youngish Girl's path--a Man
standing bare-headed and faintly smiling as one who welcomes a
much-reverenced guest--a Man tall, stalwart, sober-eyed, with a touch
of gray at his temples, a Man whom any woman would be proud to have
waiting for her at the end of any journey. And right there before all
that hurrying, scurrying, self-centered, unseeing crowd, he reached
out his hands to her and gathered her frightened fingers close into
his.

"You've--kept--me--waiting--a--long--time," he reproached her.

"Yes!" she stammered. "Yes! Yes! The train was two hours late!"

"It wasn't the hours that I was thinking about," said the Man very
quietly. "It was the--_year_!"

And then, just as suddenly, the Youngish Girl felt a tug at her coat,
and, turning round quickly, found herself staring with dazed eyes
into the eager, childish face of the Traveling Salesman's red-cloaked
wife. Not thirty feet away from her the Traveling Salesman's