“She was a queer old thing, this dame, and kept mumbling to herself that she wasn’t going to let him (her son, I took it) go to _that place_—not if she could help it. The officer tried two or three times to fix her hat on straight as they walked along, one on each side of her—but it wouldn’t stay. “Most of the passengers who came along while the old woman was blocking the left-hand passage of the gate—where I was—were passed in on the other side; there’s two ticket punchers, you know. But I hung back till they took her through, and then followed them down to the train and through the cars. Wanted to see if there was anything to it. Might be a story if I followed it up. “After they’d gone through nearly the whole train, including the Pullmans, she spotted the chap she was after in the first coach forward, next behind the smoker, and commenced to call out to him to get off and come home with her. He was a decent-appearing young chap, but what struck me as peculiar was that his face didn’t show the least surprise or anger or even annoyance when he saw his mother—in fact, it didn’t show anything at all. He shook his head a little when the old woman told him to get off, but he wouldn’t budge, and finally when the station master told her she’d have to leave the coach or go along with it, she plumped down in the seat with him and a few seconds later the train was under way. “The nearest seat I could get was in with another man next behind. I’d have preferred to be in front—you know how well you can hear people sitting behind you in a car—but the whole seat was occupied. So I sat down there behind them in the aisle seat (the other man was next the window) and getting out a newspaper, leaned forward as far as I could as though trying to get a good light on it, and keeping an ear turned in the right direction to catch anything they might say. “We must have passed Stamford before a word was spoken by either of them, but along near that place the old woman opened up suddenly and began remonstrating—I judged by the tone (her voice was too low to catch any words) with tremendous earnestness. She hadn’t been talking long though, when something he muttered got her excited and she raised her voice enough for me to hear, ‘Well you’re goin’ to get off this train the next place they stop at an’ come home—yes ye be Jamie—I won’t have you goin’ on with this—I won’t have it!’ “‘Listen here!’ Jamie said under his breath but with an earnestness that carried it over the back of the seat to me: ‘I got an A-1 situation as butler an’ general house man!’ “‘An’ don’t I know how you came by it? It’s them same people in that agency! Look at the trouble they’ve got you into, Jamie! Wasn’t you arrested twice an’ wasn’t it them who——’ “‘Aw, can that! Didn’t they push me into some o’ the finest houses there was—an’ didn’t I get recommendations that takes me anywheres?’