When these agreeable facts were fully realized, and Aunt Pen had fallen asleep behind her veil, Debby took out a book, and indulged in her favorite luxury, soon forgetting past, present, and future in the inimitable history of Martin Chuzzlewit.  The sun blazed, the cars rattled, children cried, ladies nodded, gentlemen longed for the solace of prohibited cigars, and newspapers were converted into sun-shades, nightcaps, and fans; but Debby read on, unconscious of all about her, even of the pair of eyes that watched her from the opposite corner of the car.  A gentleman with a frank, strong-featured face sat therein, and amused himself by scanning with thoughtful gaze the countenances of his fellow-travellers.  Stout Aunt Pen, dignified even in her sleep, was a “model of deportment” to the rising generation; but the student of human nature found a more attractive subject in her companion, the girl with an apple-blossom face and merry brown eyes, who sat smiling into her book, never heeding that her bonnet was awry, and the wind taking unwarrantable liberties with her ribbons and her hair.

Innocent Debby turned her pages, unaware that her fate sat opposite in the likeness of a serious, black-bearded gentleman, who watched the smiles rippling from her lips to her eyes with an interest that deepened as the minutes passed.  If his paper had been full of anything but “Bronchial Troches” and “Spalding’s Prepared Glue,” he would have found more profitable employment; but it wasn’t, and with the usual readiness of idle souls he fell into evil ways, and permitted curiosity, that feminine sin, to enter in and take possession of his manly mind.  A great desire seized him to discover what book so interested his pretty neighbor; but a cover hid the name, and he was too distant to catch it on the fluttering leaves.  Presently a stout Emerald-Islander, with her wardrobe oozing out of sundry paper parcels, vacated the seat behind the two ladies; and it was soon quietly occupied by the individual for whom Satan was finding such indecorous employment.  Peeping round the little gray bonnet, past a brown braid and a fresh cheek, the young man’s eye fell upon the words the girl was reading, and forgot to look away again.  Books were the desire of his life; but an honorable purpose and an indomitable will kept him steady at his ledgers till he could feel that he had earned the right to read.  Like wine to many another was an open page to him; he read a line, and, longing for more, took a hasty sip from his neighbor’s cup, forgetting that it was a stranger’s also.

Down the page went the two pairs of eyes, and the merriment from Debby’s seemed to light up the sombre ones behind her with a sudden shine that softened the whole face and made it very winning.  No wonder they twinkled, for Elijah Pogram spoke, and “Mrs. Hominy, the mother of the modern Gracchi, in the classical blue cap and the red cotton pocket-handkerchief, came down the room in a procession of one.”  A