They leaned over the track and looked up at the next station, where the train, just starting, throbbed out the flame-shot steam into the white moonlight.

“The most beautiful thing in New York—­the one always and certainly beautiful thing here,” said March; and his wife sighed, “Yes, yes.”  She clung to him, and remained rapt by the sight till the train drew near, and then pulled him back in a panic.

“Well, there ain’t really much to tell about her,” Fulkerson resumed when they were seated in the car.  “She’s an invention of mine.”

“Of yours?” cried Mrs. March.

“Of course!” exclaimed her husband.

“Yes—­at least in her present capacity.  She sent me a story for the syndicate, back in July some time, along about the time I first met old Dryfoos here.  It was a little too long for my purpose, and I thought I could explain better how I wanted it cut in a call than I could in a letter.  She gave a Brooklyn address, and I went to see her.  I found her,” said Fulkerson, with a vague defiance, “a perfect lady.  She was living with an aunt over there; and she had seen better days, when she was a girl, and worse ones afterward.  I don’t mean to say her husband was a bad fellow; I guess he was pretty good; he was her music-teacher; she met him in Germany, and they got married there, and got through her property before they came over here.  Well, she didn’t strike me like a person that could make much headway in literature.  Her story was well enough, but it hadn’t much sand in it; kind of-well, academic, you know.  I told her so, and she understood, and cried a little; but she did the best she could with the thing, and I took it and syndicated it.  She kind of stuck in my mind, and the first time I went to see the Dryfooses they were stopping at a sort of family hotel then till they could find a house—­” Fulkerson broke off altogether, and said, “I don’t know as I know just how the Dryfooses struck you, Mrs. March?”

“Can’t you imagine?” she answered, with a kindly, smile.

“Yes; but I don’t believe I could guess how they would have struck you last summer when I first saw them.  My! oh my! there was the native earth for you.  Mely is a pretty wild colt now, but you ought to have seen her before she was broken to harness.

“And Christine?  Ever see that black leopard they got up there in the Central Park?  That was Christine.  Well, I saw what they wanted.  They all saw it—­nobody is a fool in all directions, and the Dryfooses are in their right senses a good deal of the time.  Well, to cut a long story short, I got Mrs. Mandel to take ’em in hand—­the old lady as well as the girls.  She was a born lady, and always lived like one till she saw Mandel; and that something academic that killed her for a writer was just the very thing for them.  She knows the world well enough to know just how much polish they can take on, and she don’t try to put on a bit more.  See?”