Winona stared at them with a sickened wonder.  They were all so alive, so alert, so smiling, so eager to be on with the great adventure.  In one of the cars a band of them roared a stirring chorus.  It stirred Winona beyond the calm that should mark people of the better sort.  She forgot that a gentleman should make no noise and that a lady is serene; forgot utterly.  She waved a hand—­timidly at first—­to a cluster of young heads at a car window, and was a little dismayed when they waved heartily in return.  She recovered and waved at another group—­less timidly this time.  Again the response was instant, and a malign power against which she strove in vain carried Winona to the train’s side.  Heads were thrust forth and greetings followed, some shy and low-toned, some with feigned man-of-the-world jauntiness.

Winona was no longer Winona.  A freckled young vender with a basket halted beside her.  Winona searched for her purse and emptied its hoard into one gloved hand.  Coins spilled from this and ran about the platform.  Hands sprang from the window above her to point out their resting places, and half a dozen of the creatures issued from the car to recover them for her.  Flustered, eager, pleasantly shocked at her own daring, Winona distributed gifts from the basket, seeing only the hands that came forth to receive them.

Chewing gum, candy, popcorn, figs—­even cigarettes—­and Winona the first vice-president and recording secretary of Newbern’s anti-tobacco league!  War was assuredly what Sherman had so pithily described it, for she now sent the vender back to replenish his stock of cigarettes, and bought and bestowed them upon immature boys so long as her coin lasted.  Their laughter was noisy, their banter of one another and of Winona was continuous, and Winona laughed, even bantered.  That she should banter strangers in a public place!  She felt rowdy, but liked it.

There was a call from the front of the train, and the group about her sprang to the platform as the cars began to move, waving her gracious, almost condescending adieus, as happy people who go upon a wondrous journey will wave to poor stay-at-homes.  Winona waved wildly now, being lost to all decorum; waved to the crowded platform and then to the cloud of heads at the window above her.

From this window a hand reached down to her—­a lean, hard, brown hand—­and the shy, smiling eyes of the boy who reached it sought hers in something like appeal.  Winona clutched the hand and gripped it as she had never gripped a human hand before.

“Good-bye, sister!” said the boy, and Winona went a dozen steps with the train, still grasping the hand.

“Good-bye, good-bye, good-bye—­all of you!” she called, and was holding the hand with both her own when the train gathered speed and took it from her grasp.

She stood then watching other windows thronged with young heads as the train bore them on; she still waved and was waved at.  Faint strains of the resumed chorus drifted back to her.  Her face was hurting with a set smile.