The girl was a mite of a thing,
prematurely grave, serious, pretty, and she led a boy just old enough
to toddle. She lifted him carefully up to the seat (she who should
have been lifted herself!), took his hat, smoothed his damp, curly
hair, and tucked his head down on her shoulder, a shoulder that had
begun its life-work full early, poor tot! The boy was a feeble,
frail, ill-nourished, dirty young urchin, who fell asleep as soon as
his head touched her arm. His child-nurse, having made him
comfortable, gave a sigh of relief, and looked up and down the car
with a radiant smile of content. Presto, change! All the railroad
magnates and clerks had been watching her over their newspapers, and
in one instant she had captured the car. I saw tears in many eyes,
and might have seen more had not my own been full. There was
apparently no reason for the gay, winsome, enchanting smile that
curved the red mouth, brought two dimples into the brown cheeks, and
sunny gleams into two dark eyes. True, she was riding instead of
walking, and her charge was sleeping instead of waking and wailing;
but these surely were trifling matters on which to base such rare
content. Yet there it was shining in her face as she met a dozen
pairs of eyes, and saw in each of them love for her sweet motherly
little self, and love for the "eternal womanly" of which she was the
visible expression.
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