The girls arrived on Thursday, the train which brought most of them reaching Haydensville early in the afternoon. Hugh paced up and down the station, trying to keep up a pretense of a conversation with two or three others. He gave the wrong reply twice and then decided to say nothing more. He listened with his whole body for the first whistle of the train, and so great was the chatter of the hundreds of waiting youths that he never heard it. Suddenly the engine rounded a curve, and a minute later the train stopped before the station. Immediately the boys began to mill around the platform like cattle about to stampede, standing on their toes to look over the heads of their comrades, shoving, shouting, dancing in their impatience. Girls began to descend the steps of the cars. The stampede broke. A youth would see "his girl" and start through the crowd for her. Dozens spotted their girls at the same time and tried to run through the crowd. They bumped into one another, laughed joyously, bumped into somebody else, and finally reached the girl. When Hugh eventually saw Cynthia standing on a car platform near him, he shouted to her and held his hand high in greeting. She saw him and waved back, at the same time starting down the steps. She had a little scarlet hat pulled down over her curly brown hair, and she wore a simple blue traveling-suit that set off her slender figure perfectly. Her eyes seemed bigger and browner than ever, her nose more impudently tilted, her mouth more supremely irresistible. Her cheeks were daintily rouged, her eyebrows plucked into a thin arch. She was New York from her small pumps to the expensively simple scarlet hat. Hugh dashed several people aside and grabbed her hand, squeezing it unmercifully. "Oh, gee, Cynthia, I'm glad to see you. I thought the darn train was never going to get here. How are you? Gee, you're looking great, wonderful. Where's your suit-case?" He fairly stuttered in his excitement, his words toppling over each other. "I'm full of pep. You look wonderful. There's my suit-case, the big black one. Give the porter two bits or something. I haven't any change." Hugh tipped the porter, picked up the suit-case with one hand, and took Cynthia by the arm with the other, carefully piloting her through the noisy, surging crowd of boys and girls, all of them talking at top speed and in high, excited voices. Once Hugh and Cynthia were off the platform they could talk without shouting. "We've got to walk up the hill," Hugh explained miserably. "I couldn't get a car for love nor money. I'm awfully sorry." Cynthia did a dance-step and petted his arm happily. "What do I care? I'm so--so damn glad to see you, Hugh. You look nicer'n ever--just as clean and washed and sweet. Ooooh, look at him blush! Stop it or I'll have to kiss you right here. Stop it, I say." But Hugh went right on blushing. "Go ahead," he said bravely. "I wish you would."