Page:The gold brick (1910).djvu/309

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her new traveling gown, was prettier than Malachi had ever seen her. She sat in the front seat of the section, leaning against the double window, her elbow on its narrow sill, her chin meditatively in her palm. There had been some talk between them as the heavy train pulled out of the Van Buren Street station, and in the bustle of getting away, of arranging her bags and her bundles, and all that, Nora had beamed with pleasure, and a fine and happy excitement had sparkled through the long, black lashes of her blue Irish eyes. But as the train plunged recklessly out through the bewildering yards, she had noticed her father casting wistful glances at this or that familiar object sweeping so swiftly and irrevocably away. There was the Harrison Street police station which he had visited on so many mornings to help some poor devil out of the toils; the shops shutting down for the night, their workers trooping homeward, dead tired after the long hours; the Twelfth Street viaduct, marking the limits of his ward; the slips in the south branch of the dirty Chicago River, where big schooners still lay torpid at their winter moorings, the crossings at Sixteenth Street, then the dear old Archey Road. A silence