The next day we left for home. Mr. Winthrop was not fortunate in meeting friends; so he sat beside us. I would have preferred being alone with Mrs. Flaxman, without the restraint of his society. We had not been able on that train to secure a parlor car, for which I was very glad. There seemed more variety and wider types of humanity in the plainer car, and I liked to study the different groups and indulge in my dreams concerning them. My attention was suddenly attracted, at a station we were approaching, by a hearse and funeral procession apparently waiting for us. The cars moving along presently hid them from my view, and my attention was suddenly distracted from this melancholy spectacle by the unusual circumstance of a man coming alone into the car with an infant in his arms. The cars scarcely paused, and while I watched to see the mother following her baby the brakeman came in with an armfull of shawls, satchels, and baskets. The baby soon began to cry; when it was pitiful to watch the poor fellow's futile efforts to hush its wailings, while he tossed over the parcels apparently in search of something; but the baby's cries continued to increase in volume, and the missing article, whatever it was, refused to turn up. Mr. Winthrop cast a look on it that might have annihilated a much stronger specimen of humanity; but the father, as I supposed him to be, intercepted the wrathful gaze, and his face, already sorrowful looking, became more distressed than ever. I waited impatiently for some older woman to go to his relief; but men and women alike seemed to regard the little waif with displeasure; so at last slipping swiftly out of my seat lest Mr. Winthrop might intercept me, I went straight to the poor fellow's relief. "What is the matter with the baby?" I asked, as sympathetically as I could. "He is hungry, and they have taken his food by mistake, I am afraid, to the baggage car." "May I take care of him while you go for it?" "If you only would, I would be so grateful."