VI

Three months later, on a grey December day, Claude was seated in
the passenger coach of an accommodation freight train, going home
for the holidays. He had a pile of books on the seat beside him
and was reading, when the train stopped with a jerk that sent the
volumes tumbling to the floor. He picked them up and looked at
his watch. It was noon. The freight would lie here for an hour or
more, until the east-bound passenger went by. Claude left the car
and walked slowly up the platform toward the station. A bundle of
little spruce trees had been flung off near the freight office,
and sent a smell of Christmas into the cold air. A few drays
stood about, the horses blanketed. The steam from the locomotive
made a spreading, deep-violet stain as it curled up against the
grey sky.

Claude went into a restaurant across the street and ordered an
oyster stew. The proprietress, a plump little German woman with a
frizzed bang, always remembered him from trip to trip. While he
was eating his oysters she told him that she had just finished
roasting a chicken with sweet potatoes, and if he liked he could
have the first brown cut off the breast before the train-men came
in for dinner. Asking her to bring it along, he waited, sitting
on a stool, his boots on the lead-pipe foot-rest, his elbows on
the shiny brown counter, staring at a pyramid of tough looking
bun-sandwiches under a glass globe.

"I been lookin' for you every day," said Mrs. Voigt when she
brought his plate. "I put plenty good gravy on dem sweet