“Ain’t he the nice boy!” exclaimed the Traveling Salesman with almost passionate vehemence.

“Why, I’m sure I don’t know!” said the Youngish Girl a trifle coldly.  “Why—­it would take me quite a long time—­to decide just how—­nice he was.  But—­” with a quick softening of her voice—­“but he certainly makes one think of—­nice things—­Blue Mountains, and Green Forests, and Brown Pine Needles, and a Long, Hard Trail, shoulder to shoulder—­with a chance to warm one’s heart at last at a hearth-fire—­bigger than a sunset!”

Altogether unconsciously her small hands went gripping out to the edge of her seat, as though just a grip on plush could hold her imagination back from soaring into a miraculous, unfamiliar world where women did not idle all day long on carpets waiting for men who came on—­pavements.

“Oh, my God!” she cried out with sudden passion.  “I wish I could have lived just one day when the world was new.  I wish—­I wish I could have reaped just one single, solitary, big Emotion before the world had caught it and—­appraised it—­and taxed it—­and licensed it—­and staled it!”

“Oh-ho!” said the Traveling Salesman with a little sharp indrawing of his breath.  “Oh-ho!—­So that’s what the—­Young Electrician makes you think of, is it?”

For just an instant the Traveling Salesman thought that the Youngish Girl was going to strike him.

“I wasn’t thinking of the Young Electrician at all!” she asserted angrily.  “I was thinking of something altogether—­different.”

“Yes.  That’s just it,” murmured the Traveling Salesman placidly.  “Something—­altogether—­different.  Every time I look at him it’s the darnedest thing!  Every time I look at him I—­forget all about him.  My head begins to wag and my foot begins to tap—­and I find myself trying to—­hum him—­as though he was the words of a tune I used to know.”

When the Traveling Salesman looked round again, there were tears in the Youngish Girl’s eyes, and an instant after that her shoulders went plunging forward till her forehead rested on the back of the Traveling Salesman’s seat.

But it was not until the Young Electrician had come striding back to his seat, and wrapped himself up in the fold of a big newspaper, and not until the train had started on again and had ground out another noisy mile or so, that the Traveling Salesman spoke again—­and this time it was just a little bit surreptitiously.

“What—­you—­crying—­for?” he asked with incredible gentleness.

“I don’t know, I’m sure,” confessed the Youngish Girl, snuffingly.  “I guess I must be tired.”

“U-m-m,” said the Traveling Salesman.

After a moment or two he heard the sharp little click of a watch.

“Oh, dear me!” fretted the Youngish Girl’s somewhat smothered voice.  “I didn’t realize we were almost two hours late.  Why, it will be dark, won’t it, when we get into Boston?”