Then the car stopped in response to a signal, and a tiny, evidently aged, woman with the activity of a child sprang on board.  She had a large bag which she bore on one meagre little arm as if it had been a feather.  Her wrinkled little face, rosily colored with the cold air, peeped alertly from under quite a fine, youthful hat trimmed with smart bows and a wing, but set crookedly on the head.  Her sparse gray hair was strained tightly back from her thin temples and wound tightly at the back.  Although she was undoubtedly old, her face could no more be called old than could that of a bird.  She kept it in constant motion, bringing bright eyes to bear upon the different passengers.  She did not travel very far.  She stopped the car, springing alertly to her feet and pulling the bell-rope.  Then she hopped off as spryly as a sparrow, on her thin ankles, moving with nervous haste.  Then it was that Carroll noticed the boy for the first time, although he was seated directly opposite, and the child looked long and intently at the man.  When the strange, agile old woman ran through the car, the boy looked across with a look of innocent fun at the man, and for the first time the two pairs of eyes met.  It was not in Carroll, whatever his stress of mind, to meet a smile like that without response.  He smiled back.  Then the boy ducked his head with fervor, and off came his little cap, like a gentleman.

He was a handsome little fellow, younger than Eddy by a year or two, fair-haired and blue-eyed, with a most innocent and infantile expression.  He was rather poorly dressed, but he looked well cared for, and he had the confident and unhesitating regard of a child who is well-beloved.  He had a little package of school-books under his arm.

Carroll, after returning the child’s smile, turned away.  He did not look again, although he felt that the blue eyes with a look of insistent admiration were steadfastly upon his face.  The country through which the car was now passing was of a strange, convulsive character.  It was torn alike by nature and by man.  Storms and winds had battered at the clayey soil, spade and shovel had upturned it.  It was honey-combed and upheaved.  There were roughly shelving hills overhung with coarse dry grass like an old man’s beard, there were ragged chasms and gulfs, and all in raw reds and toneless browns and drabs, darkened constantly by the smoke which descended upon them from the chimneys of the great factories to the right.  Over this raw red and toneless drab surface crawled, on narrow tracks, little wagons, drawn by plodding old horses, guided by plodding men.  Beyond, the salt river gleamed with a keen brightness like steel.  The sky above it was dull and brooding.  The wind was going down.  The whole landscape was desolate, and with a strange, ragged, ignominious desolation.  The earth looked despoiled, insulted, dissected, as if her sacred inner parts were laid bare by these poor pygmies, the tools of a few capitalists grubbing at her vitals for the clay which meant dollars.