CHRISTMAS ON WHEELS By WILLIS BOYD ALLEN Boston MDCCCXCV CHRISTMAS ON WHEELS. I. A railroad station in a large city is hardly an inviting spot, at its best; but at the close of a cheerless, blustering December day, when biting draughts of wind come scurrying in at every open door, filling the air with a gray compound of dust and fine snow; when passengers tramp up and down the long platform, waiting impatiently for their trains; when newsboys wander about with disconsolate, red faces, hands in pockets and bundles of unsold papers under their ragged and shivering arms; when, in general, human-kind presents itself as altogether a frozen, forlorn, discouraged, and hopeless race, condemned to be swept about on the nipping, dusty wind, like Francesca and her lover, at the rate of thirty miles an hour--then the station becomes positively unendurable. So thought Bob Estabrook as he paced to and fro in the Boston & Albany depot, traveling-bag in hand, on just such a night as I have described. Beside him, locomotives puffed and plunged and backed on the shining rails, as if they, too, felt compelled to trot up and down to keep themselves warm, and in even tolerably good humor. “Just my luck!” growled Bob with a misanthropic glare at a loud-voiced family who were passing; “Christmas coming, two jolly Brighton parties and an oratorio thrown up, and here am I, fired off to San Francisco. So much for being junior member of a law firm. Wonder what”-- Here the ruffled current of his meditations ran plump against a rock, and as suddenly diverged from its former course. The rock was no less than a young person who at that moment approached with a gray-haired man and inquired the way to the ticket office. “Just beyond the waiting-room, on the right,” replied Bob, pointing to the office and lifting his hat courteously, in response to the lady’s question. He watched them with growing interest as they followed his directions and stood before the lighted window. The two silhouettes were decidedly out of the common. The voice, whose delicate tones still lingered pleasantly about Mr. Robert Estabrook’s fastidious ears, was an individual voice, as distinguishable from any other he remembered as was the owner’s bright face, the little fur collar beneath it, the daintily-gloved hands, and the pretty brown traveling suit. “Dignified old fellow!” mused Bob, irrelevantly, as the couple moved toward the train gates. “Probably her father. Perhaps--hallo! by George, they’re going on my car!” With which breath of summer in his winter of discontent the young man proceeded to finish his cigar, consult his watch, and, as the last warning bell rang, step upon the platform of the already moving Pullman.