She took out her pocket-book and counted the money which it contained.  There were fifteen dollars and some loose change.  The railroad station was on a road parallel to the one on which she was walking.  An express train flashed by as she stood there.  Suddenly Maria became possessed of one of those impulses which come to everybody, but to which comparatively few yield in lifetimes.  The girl gathered up her skirts and broke into a run for the railroad station.  She knew that there was an accommodation train due soon after the express.  She reached the dusty platform, in fact, just as the train came in.  There were no other passengers from Amity except a woman whom she did not know, dragging a stout child by the arm.  The child was enveloped in clothing to such an extent that it could scarcely walk.  It stumbled over its voluminous white coat.  Nobody could have told its sex.  It cast a look of stupid discomfort at Maria, then its rasped little face opened for a wail.  “Shet up!” said the mother, and she dragged more forcibly at the podgy little arm, and the child broke into a lop-sided run towards the cars.

Maria had no time to get a ticket.  She only had time for that one glance at the helpless, miserable child, before she climbed up the steep car-steps.  She found an empty seat, and shrugged close to the window.  She did not think very much of what she was doing.  She thought more of the absurdly uncomfortable child, over-swathed in clothing, and over-disciplined with mother-love, she could not have told why.  She wondered what it would be like to have an ugly, uninteresting, viciously expostulating little one dragging at her hand.  The mother, although stout and mature-looking, was not much older than she.  It seemed to her that the being fond of such a child, and being happy under such circumstances, would involve as much of a vital change in herself as death itself.  And yet she wondered if such a change were possible with all women, herself included.  She gazed absently at the pale landscape past which the train was flying.  The conductor had to touch her arm before he could arouse her attention, when he asked for her ticket.  Then she looked at him vacantly, and he had to repeat his “Ticket, please.”

Maria opened her pocket-book and said, mechanically, the name of the first station which came into her head, “Ridgewood.”  Ridgewood was a small city about fifteen miles distant.  She had sometimes been there shopping.  She gave the conductor a five-dollar bill, and he went away, murmuring something about the change.  When he returned with the rebate-slip and the change, he had to touch her shoulder again to arrest her attention.

“Change, miss,” said the conductor, and “you can get ten cents back on this at the station.”