9.  “And now, I suppose, you will make her happy?” “Happy!” he replied; “why, you don’t know anything about it!  She’s worked night and day since I have been in England, trying to support herself and the children decently.  They paid her thirteen cents apiece for making shirts, and that’s the way she has lived half the time.  She’ll come down to the depot to meet me in a gingham dress and a shawl a hundred years old, and she’ll think she’s dressed up!  Perhaps she won’t have any fine dresses in a week or so, eh?’” 10.  The stranger then strode down the passageway again, and getting in a corner where he seemed to suppose that he was out of sight, went through the strangest pantomime,—­laughing putting his mouth into the drollest shapes, and swinging himself back and forth in the limited space.

11.  As the train was going into the depot, I placed myself on the platform of the car in front of the one in which I had been riding, and opposite the stranger, who, with a portmanteau in each hand, was standing on the lowest step, ready to jump to the ground.  I looked from his face to the faces of the people before us, but saw no sign of recognition.  Suddenly he cried, “There they are!”

12.  Then he laughed outright, but in a hysterical way, as he looked over the crowd in front of him.  I followed his eye and saw, some distance back, as if crowded out by the well-dressed and elbowing throng, a little woman in a faded dress and a well-worn hat, with a face almost painful in its intense but hopeful expression, glancing rapidly from window to window as the coaches passed by.

13.  She had not seen the stranger, but a moment after she caught his eye.  In another instant he had jumped to the platform with his two portmanteaus, and, pushing his way through the crowd, he rushed towards the place where she was standing.  I think I never saw a face assume so many different expressions in so short a time as did that of the little woman while her husband was on his way to meet her.

14.  She was not pretty,—­on the contrary, she was very plain-looking; but somehow I felt a big lump rise in my throat as I watched her.  She was trying to laugh, but, God bless her, how completely she failed in the attempt!  Her mouth got into the position to laugh, but it never moved after that, save to draw down at the corners and quiver, while her eyes blinked so fast that I suspect she only caught occasional glimpses of the broad-shouldered fellow who elbowed his way so rapidly toward her.

15.  As he drew close, and dropped the portmanteaus, she turned to one side, and covered her face with her hands; and thus she was when the strong man gathered her up in his arms as if she were a child, and held her sobbing to his breast.

16.  There were enough staring at them, heaven knows; so I turned my eyes away a moment, and then I saw two boys in threadbare roundabouts standing near, wiping their eyes on their sleeves, and bursting into tears anew at every fresh demonstration on the part of their mother.  When I looked at the stranger again he had his hat drawn over his eyes; but his wife was looking up at him, and it seemed as if the pent-up tears of those weary months of waiting were streaming through her eyelids.