“Dandy sunset, ain’t it?” said a voice at her ear.  She looked and saw Bessy Van Dorn, her large, blooming face, rosy with the cold, smiling at her from under a mass of tossing black plumes on a picture-hat.  The girl was really superb in a long, fur-lined coat.  She had driven in a sleigh to the station, and she expected Frank Eastman on the train, and was, with the most innocent and ignorant boldness in the world, planning to drive him home, although she was not engaged to him and he was not expecting her.  Her face, turning from the wonderful after-glow of the sunset to Charlotte’s, had also something of the same rapt expression in spite of her words.

“Yes, it is beautiful,” replied Charlotte, but rather coldly.  She was a friendly little soul, but she did not naturally care for girls of Bessy Van Dorn’s particular type.  She was herself too fine and small before such a mass of inflorescence.

“It’s cold,” said Bessy Van Dorn, further, “but, land, I like it!  Have you been sleigh-riding?”

“No, I haven’t,” replied Charlotte.

“Oh, I forgot,” said Bessy.

Charlotte knew what she had forgot—­that the horses had gone for debt—­and she reddened, but the other girl’s voice was honest.

“I’d like to take you sometime,” said Bessy.

“Thank you,” said Charlotte.

“I’d offer to take you home to-night,” said Bessy, “but I’ve arranged to take somebody else.”

“Thank you.  I could not go, anyway,” said Charlotte.  “I am down to meet my father.”

“Oh!” said Bessy.  “Well, then you couldn’t.  A sleigh ain’t quite wide enough for three, unless one of ’em is your best young man,” she giggled.  Charlotte felt ashamed.

“My father is,” she said, sternly.  She fairly turned her back on Bessy Van Dorn, but she did not notice it, for the train was audible in the distance, and Bessy began calculating her distance from the car in which Frank Eastman usually rode, that she might be sure not to miss him.

Charlotte stood on the platform, and also ran along by the side of the train scanning anxiously the men who alighted.  To her great astonishment, her father was not among them.  She could scarcely believe it when the train went slowly past the station and her father had not got off.

Bessy Van Dorn, driving Frank Eastman in her sleigh, with the fringe of fur tails dangling over the back, looked around at Charlotte slowly retreating from the station.  “Why, her father didn’t come!” said she.

“Whose father?” asked young Eastman.  He looked admiringly and even lovingly at the girl, and yet in a slightly scornful and shamed fashion.  He hated to think of what some of the men he knew would say about her meeting him at the station.

“Why, that poor little Charlotte Carroll’s!” said Bessy.  “Say,” she added, after a second’s hesitation.

“What?” asked young Eastman.

“I’ve a good mind to ask her to ride.  We’re goin’ her way.  You don’t mind?”