I came out from the city that night on the accommodation, tired to death and loaded down with bundles for everybody in Friendship Village. Folks used to send into town by me for everything _but_ stoves and wagons, though I wouldn't buy anything there except what you can't buy in the village: lamb's-wool for comforters, and cut-glass and baby-pushers, and shrimps--that Silas won't keep in the post-office store, because they don't agree with his stomach. Well, I was all packages that night, and it was through dropping one in the seat in front of me that I first saw the little boy. He was laying down, getting to sleep if he could and pulling his eyes open occasional to see what was going on around him. His mother had had the seat turned, and she sat there beyond him, facing me, and I noticed her--flat red cheeks, an ostrich feather broke in the middle, blue and red stone rings on three fingers, and giving a good deal of attention to studying the folks around her. She was the kind of woman you see and don't look back to, 'count of other things interesting you more. But the little boy, he was different. He wasn't more than a year old, and he didn't look that--and his cheeks were flushed and his eyelashes and mouth made you think "My!" I remember feeling I didn't see how the woman could keep from waking him up, just to prove he was hers and she could if she wanted to. Instead of that, all she did was continually to get up and go out of the car. Every station we stopped at--and the accommodation acts like it was made for the stations and not the stations for it--she was up and out, as if the town was something swimming up to the car-door to speak to her. She'd leave the baby asleep in the seat, and I wondered what would happen if he woke up while she was gone, and started to roll. She stayed every time up till after the train started--I didn't wonder it made her cold, and that after a bit she put on her coat before she went. And once or twice she carried out her valise with her, as if she might have expected somebody to be there to get it. "Mebbe she's got somebody's laundry," thinks I, "and mebbe a stranger has asked her to bring it out on the train and she can't remember what station it's to be put off at." They send things to stations along the way a lot on the accommodation--everybody being neighbors, so. Well, when we got to the Junction, out she went again, cloak and valise and all. But I didn't think much about her then, because at the Junction it's always all excitement, being that's where they switch the parlor car off the train, and whoever is in it for Friendship Village has to come back in the day coach for the rest of the way, and be just folks. And among those that came back that night was the Brother-man.