While Leslie was noticing these things, Elinor Hadden stood by a window with her back to the others.  She did not complain at first; one doesn’t like to allow, at once, that the toothache, or a mischance like this that had happened to her, is an established fact,—­one is in for it the moment one does that.  But she had got a cinder in her eye; and though she had winked, and stared, and rolled her eyelid under, and tried all the approved and instinctive means, it seemed persistent; and she was forced at last, just as her party was going in to dinner, to acknowledge that this traveler’s misery had befallen her, and to make up her mind to the pain and wretchedness and ugliness of it for hours, if not even for days.  Her face was quite disfigured already; the afflicted eye was bloodshot, and the whole cheek was red with tears and rubbing; she could only follow blindly along, her handkerchief up, and, half groping into the seat offered her, begin comfortlessly to help herself to some soup with her left hand.  There was leaning across to inquire and pity; there were half a dozen things suggested, to which she could only reply, forlornly and impatiently, “I’ve tried it.”  None of them could eat much, or with any satisfaction; this atom in the wrong place set everything wrong all at once with four people who, till now, had been so cheery.

The spinster lady was seated at some little distance down, on the opposite side.  She began to send quick, interested glances over at them; to make little half-starts toward them, as if she would speak; and at last, leaving her own dinner unfinished, she suddenly pushed back her chair, got up, and came round.  She touched Elinor Hadden on the shoulder, without the least ado of ceremony.  “Come out here with me,” she said.  “I can set you right in half a minute;” and, confident of being followed, moved off briskly out of the long hall.

Elinor gave a one-sided, questioning glance at her sisters before she complied, reminding Leslie comically of the poor, one-eyed man in the cars; and presently, with a little hesitation, Mrs. Linceford and Jeannie compromised the matter by rising themselves and accompanying Elinor from the room.  Leslie, of course, went also.

The lady had her gray bonnet on when they got back to the little parlor; there is no time to lose in mere waiting for anything at a railway dining-place; and she had her bag—­a veritable, old-fashioned, home-made carpet thing—­open on a chair before her, and in her hand a long, knit purse with steel beads and rings.  Out of this she took a twisted bit of paper, and from the paper a minute something which she popped between her lips as she replaced the other things.  Then she just beckoned, hastily, to Elinor.

“It’s only an eyestone; did you ever have one in?  Well, you needn’t be afraid of it; I’ve had ’em in hundreds of times.  You wouldn’t know ’t was there, and it’ll just ease all the worry; and by and by it’ll drop out of itself, cinder and all.  They’re terribly teasing things, cinders; and somebody’s always sure to get one.  I always keep three eyestones in my purse.  You needn’t mind my not having it back; I’ve got a little glass bottle full at home, and it’s wonderful the sight of comfort they’ve been to folks.”