THE RETURN TICKET

(Reprinted by permission of The Canadian Ladies’ Home Journal.)

In the station at Emerson, the boundary town, we were waiting for the Soo train, which comes at an early hour in the morning.  It was a bitterly cold, dark, winter morning; the wires overhead sang dismally in the wind, and even the cheer of the big coal fire that glowed in the rusty stove was dampened by the incessant mourning of the storm.

Along the walls, on the benches, sat the trackmen, in their sheepskin coats and fur caps, with earlaps tied tightly down.  They were tired and sleepy, and sat in every conceivable attitude expressive of sleepiness and fatigue.  A red lantern, like an evil eye, gleamed from one dark corner; in the middle of the floor were several green lamps turned low, and over against the wall hung one barred lantern whose bright little gleam of light reminded one uncomfortably of a small, live mouse in a cage, caught and doomed, but undaunted still.  The telegraph instruments clicked at intervals.  Two men, wrapped in overcoats, stood beside the stove and talked in low tones about the way real estate was increasing in value in Winnipeg.

The door opened and a big fellow, another snow shoveller, came in hurriedly, letting in a burst of flying snow that sizzled on the hot stove.  It did not rouse the sleepers from the bench; neither did the new-comer’s remark that it was a “deuce of a night” bring forth any argument—­we were one on that point.

The train was late; the night agent told us that when he came out to shovel in more coal—­“she” was delayed by the storm.

I leaned back and tried to be comfortable.  After all, I thought, it might easily be worse.  I was going home after a pleasant visit.  I had many agreeable things to think of, and still I kept thinking to myself that it was not a cheerful night.  The clock, of course, indicated that it was morning, but the deep black that looked in through the frosted windows, the heavy shadows in the room, which the flickering lanterns only seemed to emphasize, were all of the night, and bore no relation to the morning.

The train came at last with a roar that drowned the voice of the storm.  The sleepers on the bench sprang up like one man, seized their lanterns, and we all rushed out together.  The long coach that I entered was filled with tired, sleepy-looking people, who had been sitting up all night.  They were curled up uncomfortably, making a brave attempt to rest, all except one little old lady, who sat upright, looking out into the black night.  When the official came to ask the passengers where they were going, I heard her tell him that she was a Canadian, and she had been “down in the States with Annie, and now she was bringing Annie home,” and as she said this she pointed significantly ahead to the baggage car.

There was something about the old lady that appealed to me.  I went over to her when the official had gone out.  No, she wasn’t tired, she said; she “had been up a good many nights, and been worried some, but the night before last she had had a real good sleep.”