“Will they be out here all winter?” asked Meyers, who was a newcomer in Lloydsborough.

“Yes, their father and mother have gone to Florida, and left them here with their grandmother Maclntyre.”

“I imagine the old lady has her hands full,” said Meyers, as a sound of scuffling in the next room reached him.

“Oh, I don’t know about that, now,” said the station-master.  “They’re noisy children, to be sure, and just boiling over with mischief, but if you can find any better-mannered little gentlemen anywhere in the State when there’s ladies around, I’d like you to trot ’em out.  They came down to the train with their aunt this morning, Miss Allison Maclntyre, and their politeness to her was something pretty to see, I can tell you, sir.”

There was a moment’s pause, in which the boys could be heard laughing in the next room.

“No,” said the station-master again, “I’m thinking it’s not the boys who will be keeping Mrs. Maclntyre’s hands full this winter, so much as that little granddaughter of hers that came here last fall,—­little Virginia Dudley.  You can guess what’s she like from her nickname.  They call her Ginger.  She had always lived at some army post out West, until her father, Captain Dudley, was ordered to Cuba.  He was wounded down there, and has never been entirely well since.  When he found they were going to keep him there all winter, he sent for his wife last September, and there was nothing to do with Virginia but to bring her back to Kentucky to her grandmother.”

“Oh, she’s the little girl who went in on the train this morning with Miss Allison,” said the ticket agent.  “I suppose the boys have come down to meet them.  They’ll have a long time to wait.”

While this conversation was going on behind the ticket window, the two boys stretched themselves out on a long bench beside the stove.  The warm room made them feel drowsy after their violent out-door exercise.  Keith, the younger one, yawned several times, and finally lay down on the bench with his cap for a pillow.  He was eight years old, but curled up in that fashion, with his long eyelashes resting on his red cheeks, and one plump little hand tucked under his chin, he looked much younger.

“Wake me up, Malcolm, when it’s time for Aunt Allison’s train,” he said to his brother.  “Ginger would never stop teasing me if she should find me asleep.”

Malcolm unbuttoned his reefer, and, after much tugging, pulled out a handsome little gold watch.  “Oh, there’s a long time to wait!” he exclaimed.  “We need not have left the pond so early, for the train will not be here for twenty-five minutes.  I believe I’ll curl up here myself, till then.  I hope they won’t forget the valentines we sent for.”

The room was very still for a few minutes.  There was no sound at all except the crackling of the fire and the shivering of the wind in the long stovepipe.  Then some one turned the door-knob so cautiously and slowly that it unlatched without a sound.