She offered a murmur of placative laughter as her apology, and said:  “Well, I just thought I’d tell you—­because if you did intend going to the station, I thought you probably wouldn’t want to miss it and get there too late.  I’ve got your hat here all nicely brushed for you.  It’s nearly twenty minutes of one, Willie.”

“What?”

“Yes, it is.  It’s—­”

She had no further speech with him.

Breathless, William flung open his door, seized the hat, racketed down the stairs, and out through the front door, which he left open behind him.  Eight seconds later he returned at a gallop, hurtled up the stairs and into his room, emerging instantly with something concealed under his coat.  Replying incoherently to his mother’s inquiries, he fell down the stairs as far as the landing, used the impetus thus given as a help to greater speed for the rest of the descent—­and passed out of hearing.

Mrs. Baxter sighed, and went to a window in her own room, and looked out.

William was already more than half-way to the next corner, where there was a car-line that ran to the station; but the distance was not too great for Mrs. Baxter to comprehend the nature of the symmetrical white parcel now carried in his right hand.  Her face became pensive as she gazed after the flying slender figure:—­there came to her mind the recollection of a seventeen-year-old boy who had brought a box of candy (a small one, like William’s) to the station, once, long ago, when she had been visiting in another town.  For just a moment she thought of that boy she had known, so many years ago, and a smile came vaguely upon her lips.  She wondered what kind of a woman he had married, and how many children he had—­and whether he was a widower——­

The fleeting recollection passed; she turned from the window and shook her head, puzzled.

“Now where on earth could Jane and that little Kirsted girl have gone?” she murmured.

...  At the station, William, descending from the street-car, found that he had six minutes to spare.  Reassured of so much by the great clock in the station tower, he entered the building, and, with calm and dignified steps, crossed the large waiting-room.  Those calm and dignified steps were taken by feet which little betrayed the tremulousness of the knees above them.  Moreover, though William’s face was red, his expression—­cold, and concentrated upon high matters—­scorned the stranger, and warned the lower classes that the mission of this bit of gentry was not to them.

With but one sweeping and repellent glance over the canaille present, he made sure that the person he sought was not in the waiting-room.  Therefore, he turned to the doors which gave admission to the tracks, but before he went out he paused for an instant of displeasure.  Hard by the doors stood a telephone-booth, and from inside this booth a little girl of nine or ten was peering eagerly out at William, her eyes just above the lower level of the glass window in the door.