As the months wore on he did them good.  They needed waking up, those men who lounged at the station, and he had some influence in that direction; not much, of course, but every traveller has some influence, and his was of a lively, and, on the whole, of a beneficial sort.  The men brought forth a mood to greet him which was more in correspondence with his own.

When winter came the weather was very bleak; deep snow was all around.  Gilby disliked the closeness of the hotel, which was sealed to the outer air.

‘Whew!’ he would say, ’you fellows, let us do something to keep ourselves warm.’  And after much exercise of his will, which was strong, he actually had the younger men all jumping with him from a wood pile near the platform to see who could jump farthest.  He was not very young himself; he was about thirty, and rather bald; the men who were with him were much younger, but he thought nothing of that.  He led them on, and incited them to feats much greater than his own, with boisterous challenges and loud bravos.  Before he jumped himself he always made mock hesitation for their amusement, swinging his arms, and apparently bracing himself for the leap.  Perhaps the deep frost of the country made him frisky because he was not accustomed to it; perhaps it was always his nature to be noisy and absurd when he tried to be amusing.  Certain it was that it never once occurred to him that under the French politeness with which he was treated, under the sincere liking which they really grew to have for him, there was much quiet amusement at his expense.  It was just as well that he did not know, for he would have been terribly affronted; as it was, he remained on the best of terms with them to the end.

The feeling of amusement found vent in his absence in laughter and mimicry.  Zilda joined in this mimicry; she watched the Frenchmen strut along the platform in imitation of Gilby, and smiled when their imitation was good.  When it was poor she cried, ’Non, ce n’est pas comme ca,’ and she came out from the doorway and showed them how to do it.  Her imitation was very good indeed, and excited much laughter.  This showed that Zilda had been waked into greater vivacity.  Six months before she could not have done so good a piece of acting.

Zilda’s exhibition would go further than this.  Excited by success, she would climb the wood pile, large and heavy as she was, and, standing upon its edge, would flap her arms and flutter back in a frightened manner and brace herself to the leap, as Gilby had done.  She was aided in this representation by her familiarity with the habits of chickens when they try to get down from a high roost.  The resemblance struck her; she would cry aloud to the men—­

‘Voici Monsieur Geelby, le poulet qui a peur de descendre!’

The fact that at the thought of mimicking Gilby Zilda was roused to an unwarranted glow of excitement showed, had any one been wise enough to see it, that she felt some inward cause of pleasurable excitement at the mention of his name.  A narrow nature cannot see absurdity in what it loves, but Zilda’s nature was not narrow.  She had learnt to love little Gilby in a fond, deep, silent way that was her fashion of loving.