Page:Chetyates00yateiala.pdf/314

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.

in and poked over a few things in the suit-case and passed on; and the incubus sat there, as quiet as you please, all the way to Welland, where the porter set it off for me, and I began to wait for my train.

"The station was a brand new one, about eight by ten feet, or something like that, and there were a lot of men in working clothes and tobacco juice standing around the platform talking things over, or just leaning back and thinking about them. I never saw so many men leaning their backs against things for so long a time before in my life. It seemed as if they must think that the side walls of the new building were made to lie on, and they were testing them to see which board was the softest. There was an old lady there, too, and she told me all about every sickness that every member of her family had had since they arrived, and was just starting in on the neighbors, when my train came.

"It stopped with all the mail cars and day coaches, and such things, right beside me, and away off on the horizon was the car that I belonged to. The old lady had kept me so busy that I hadn't thought of a plan for getting aboard,—