with{12} refractory twigs, his eyebrows were frosted, his moustache an icy caret.

{12}

The average tramp might well have hesitated before acknowledging kinship with him.

His eye roved through the length of the car as it had that first night in the depot. She was not there. He was as anxious as a boy for her praise.

“Guess I’ll take it into the next car,” he said apologetically to the nearest passenger; “there’s more coming just behind.”

She was not in the second Pullman. Of course she wasn’t in the baggage car. Was it possible—? He entered the third and last car, recoiling just a bit at the odor of crowded and unclean poverty which met him at the door.

Sure enough, there she sat—his idle, fashionable type of inutility—with one frowzy child upon the seat beside her, two very rumpled-looking boys in front, and a baby with terracotta hair in her arms. Somehow, the{13} baby’s hair against the fur collar didn’t look so badly as you would expect, either. She seemed to be singing it to sleep, and kept on with her soft crooning as she glanced up over the tangled red locks at snowy Bob and his armful of wood, with a look in her eyes that would have sent him cheerfully to Alaska for more, had there been need. A few seats off, I ought to say, her father was talking kindly and earnestly to a rough-looking man and his wife, the latter of whom wore the dear old gentleman’s cloak. Fathers and daughters are apt to be pretty much alike in these things, you see.{14}

{13}

{14}

III.

With the cheerful heat of the fires, the kind offices of nearly all the well-dressed people to the poorer ones,—for they were not slow, these kid-gloved Pullman passengers, to follow Miss Raymond’s example,—the day wore on quietly and not unpleasantly toward its close. Then some one suddenly remembered that it was Christmas Eve.

“Dear me!” cried Miss Raymond delightedly, reaching round the baby to clap her hands; “let’s have a Christmas party!”

A few sighed and shook their heads as they thought of their own home firesides; one or two smiled indulgently on the small enthusiast; several chimed in at once. Conductor and baggage-master were consulted, and the spacious baggage car “specially{15} engaged for 

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