Michael met Mr. Endicott unembarrassed. His early life in New York had
given him a self-poise that nothing seemed to disturb; but when the
father turned to introduce his young daughter, the boy caught his
breath and gazed at her with deepening color, and intense delight.
She was here then, his Starr! She had come to see him, and she looked
just as he would have her look. He had not realized before that she
would be grown up, but of course she would, and the change in her was
not so great as to shock his memory. The clear white of her skin with
its fresh coloring was the same. New York life had not made it sallow.
The roses were in her cheeks as much as when she was a little child.
Her eyes were the same, dark and merry and looked at him straightly,
unabashed, with the ease of a girl trained by a society mother. The
dark curls were there, only longer, hanging to the slender waist and
crowned with a fine wide Panama hat. She gave him a little gloved hand
and said: “I’m afraid I don’t remember you very well, but daddy has
been telling me about you and I’m very glad to see you.”
She was only a little over twelve, but she spoke with ease and
simplicity, and for the first time in his life Michael felt conscious
of himself. She was so perfect, so lovely, so finished in every
expression and movement. She looked at him intelligently, politely
curious, and no longer with the baby eyes that wondered at nothing. He
himself could not help wondering what she must think of him, and for a
few minutes he grew shy before her.
Mr. Endicott was surprised and pleased at the appearance of the boy.
The passing of the years had easily erased the tender feelings that
Mikky the little street urchin had stirred in his heart. This visit to
the school and college was not so much on account of the boy, to whom
he had come to feel he had discharged his full duty, but because of the
repeated invitations on the part of Professor Harkness and the
president. It went not against him to see the institution to which he
had from time to time contributed, in addition to his liberal allowance
for the education of the boy. It was perfectly convenient for him to
stop, being on the regular route he had laid out for his southern trip.
His wife he had left at Palm Beach with her fashionable friends; and
with Starr as his companion, the father was going through the orange
belt on a tour of investigation with a view to investments. It suited
him perfectly to stop off and receive the thanks of the college,
therefore he stopped. Not that he was a heartless man, but there were
so many things in his world to make him forget, and a little pleasant
adulation is grateful to the most of us.
But when Michael in all his striking beauty stood before him with the
deference of a more than son, his heart suddenly gave a great leap back
to the day when he had first looked down upon the little white face on
the pillow; when the blue eyes had opened and Mikky had smiled. Michael
smiled now, and Endicott became aware at once of the subtle fascination
of that smile. And now the thought presented itself. “What if this were
my son! how proud I should be of him!”
Michael was indeed good to look upon even to the eyes of the city
critic. Endicott had taken care to leave orders with his tailor for a
full outfit to be sent to the boy, Spring and Fall, of suitable plain
clothing for a school boy, little realizing how unnecessary it would
have been to have dressed him so well. The tailor, nothing loth, had
taken the measurements which were sent to him from year to year in
answer to the letter of the firm, and had kept Michael looking as well
as any rich man’s son need desire to look. Not that the boy knew nor
realized. The clothes came to him, like his board and tuition, and he
took them well pleased and wrote his best letter of thanks each year as
Professor Harkness suggested; but he had no idea that a part at least
of his power of leadership with all the boys of the school was due to
his plain though stylishly cut garments. This fact would not have
counted for anything with boys who had been living in Florida for
years, for any plain decent clothes were thought fit, no matter how
they were cut; but the patronage of the school was at least one-half
made up of rich men’s sons who were sent South for a few years to a
milder climate for their health. These as a rule, when they came, had
exaggerated ideas of the importance of clothes and prevailing modes.
And so it was that Michael did not look like a dowdy country boy to his
benefactor, but on the contrary presented a remarkable contrast with
many of the boys with whom Endicott was acquainted at home. There was
something about Michael even when he was a small lad that commanded
marked attention from all who saw him. This attention Endicott and his
daughter gave now as they walked beside him in the glow of the sunset,
and listened as he pointed out the various spots of interest in the
little college town.
The institution boasted of no carriage, and the single horse-car that
travelled to the station belonged to the hotel and its guests. However,
the walk was not long, and gave the travellers an opportunity to
breathe the clear air and feel the stillness of the evening which was
only emphasized by each separate sound now and again.
Starr, as she walked on the inside of the board sidewalk, and looked
down at the small pink and white and crimson pea blossoms growing
broad-cast, and then up at the tallness of the great pines, felt a kind
of awe stealing upon her. The one day she had spent at Palm Beach had
been so filled with hotels and people and automobiles that she had had
no opportunity to realize the tropical nature of the land. But here in
this quiet spot, where the tiny station, the post office, the grocery,
and a few scattered dwellings with the lights of the great tourists’
hotel gleaming in the distance, seemed all there was of human
habitation; and where the sky was wide even to bewilderment; she seemed
suddenly to realize the difference from New York.
Michael had recovered his poise as soon as she no longer faced him,
though he was profoundly conscious of her presence there on the other
side of her father. But he talked easily and well. Yes, there was the
hotel. It held five hundred guests and was pretty well filled at this
season of the year. There were some distinguished people stopping
there. The railroad president’s private car was on the track for a few
hours last week. That car over on the siding belonged to a great steel
magnate. The other one had brought the wife of a great inventor. Off
there at the right toward the sunset were the school and college
buildings. No, they could not be seen, until one passed the orange
grove. Too bad there was no conveyance, but the one little car turned
off toward the hotel at this corner, and the one beast of burden
belonging to the college, the college Mule—Minus, by name, because
there were so many things that he was not—was lame today and therefore
could not be called into requisition to bring the guests from the
station.
Mr. Endicott felt that he was drawing nearer to nature in this quiet
walk than he had been since he was a boy and visited his grandfather’s
farm. It rested and pleased him immensely, and he was charmed with the
boy, his protégé. His frank, simple conversation was free from all
affectation on the one hand, or from any hint of his low origin on the
other hand. He felt already that he had done a good thing in sending
this boy down here to be educated. It was worth the little money he had
put into it.
Starr watched Michael shyly from the shelter of her father’s side and
listened to him. He was not like the boys she met in New York. To begin
with he was remarkably fine looking, and added to that there was a
mingled strength and kindliness in his face, and above all about his
smile, that made her feel instinctively that he was nobler than most of
them. She could not think of a boy of her acquaintance who had a firm
chin like that. This boy had something about him that made the girl
know instantly that he had a greater purpose in life than his own
pleasure. Not that she thought this all out analytically. Starr had
never learned to think. She only felt it as she looked at him, and
liked him at once. Moreover there was a sort of glamour over the boy in
her eyes, for her father had just been telling her the story of how he
had saved her life when she was barely two years old. She felt a
prideful proprietorship in him that made her shy in his presence.
At the college president’s gate, just on the edge of the campus, the
president came out with apologies. He had been detained on a bit of
business at the county seat five miles away, and had driven home with a
friend whose horse was very slow. He was sorry not to have done their
honored guests the courtesy of being at the station on their arrival.
Endicott walked with the president after the greetings, and Michael
dropped behind with Starr eagerly pointing out to her the buildings.
“That’s the chapel, and beyond are the study and recitation rooms. The
next is the dining hall and servant’s quarters, and over on that side
of the campus is our dormitory. My window looks down on the lake. Every
morning I go before breakfast for a swim.”
“Oh, aren’t you afraid of alligators?” exclaimed Starr shivering
prettily.
Michael looked down at her fragile loveliness with a softened
appreciation, as one looks at the tender precious things of life that
need protection.
“No,” he answered without laughing, as some of the other boys would
have done at her girlish fears, “they never bother us here, and
besides, I’m sort of acquainted with them. I’m not afraid of them.
Nothing will hurt you if you understand it well enough to look out for
its rights.”
“Oh!” said Starr eyeing him in wonder. As if an alligator had rights!
What a strange, interesting boy. The idea of understanding an
alligator. She was about to ask how understanding the creature would
keep one from being eaten up when Michael pointed to the crimsoning
West:
“See!” he said eagerly as if he were pointing to a loved scene, “the
sun is almost down. Don’t you love to watch it? In a minute more it
will be gone and then it will be dark. Hear that evening bird?
‘Tit-wiloo! Tit-wiloo!’ He sings sometimes late at night.”
Starr followed his eager words, and saw the sun slipping, slipping like
a great ruby disc behind the fringe of palm and pine and oak that
bordered the little lake below the campus; saw the wild bird dart from
the thicket into the clear amber of the sky above, utter its sweet
weird call, and drop again into the fine brown shadows of the living
picture; watched, fascinated as the sun slipped lower, lower, to the
half now, and now less than half.
Breathless they both stood and let the two men go on ahead, while they
watched the wonder of the day turn into night. The brilliant liquid
crimson poured itself away to other lands, till only a rim of wonderful
glowing garnet remained; then, like a living thing dying into another
life, it too dropped away, and all was night.
“Why! How dark it is!” exclaimed Starr as she turned to her companion
again and found she could scarcely see his face. “Why! How queer! Where
is the twilight? Is anything the matter? I never saw it get dark all at
once like this!” She peered around into the strange velvet darkness
with troubled eyes.
Michael was all attention at once.
“No, that’s all right,” he assured her. “That’s the way we do here.
Almost everybody from the north speaks about it at first. They can’t
understand it. Its the difference in the position of the sun, nearer
the equator, you know. I’ll show you all about it on the chart in the
astronomical room if you care to see. We haven’t any twilight here. I
should think twilight would be queer. You wouldn’t just know when night
began and day ended. I don’t remember about it when I lived in New
York. Look up there! That’s the evening star! It’s come out for you
tonight—to welcome another—Starr!”
Oh, Michael, of unknown origin! Whence came that skill of delicate
compliment, that grace of courtesy, that you, plucked from the slime of
the gutter, set apart from all sweetening influences of loving contact
with, womankind, should be able so gallantly and respectfully to guide
the young girl through the darkness, touching her little elbow
distantly, tactfully, reverently, exactly as the college president
helps his wife across the road on Sabbath to the church? Is it only
instinct, come down from some patrician ancestor of gallant ways and
kind, or have you watched and caught the knack from the noble scholar
who is your ideal of all that is manly?
They walked silently through the warm darkness until they came within
the circle of light from the open door, and matron and teachers came
out to welcome the young stranger and bring her into the house.
Michael lingered for a moment by the door, watching her as she went
with the matron, her sweet face wreathed in smiles, the matron’s thin
arm around her and a new and gentle look upon her severe countenance;
watched until they mounted the stairs out of sight; then he went out of
doors.
Taking off his cap he stood reverently looking up at the star,
communing with it perhaps about the human Starr that had come back to
him out of the shadows of the past.
And she was a star. No one who saw her but acknowledged it. He
marvelled as he recalled the change wrought in the face of the matron
and because of her gentleness to the little girl forgave her all that
she had not been to his motherless boyhood.
Starr came down to dinner in a few minutes radiant in a little rosy
frock of soft Eastern silk, girdled with a fringed scarf of the same
and a knot of coral velvet in her hair. From the string of pearls about
her white neck to the dainty point of her slipper she was exquisite and
Michael watched her with open admiration; whereat the long lashes
drooped shyly over the girl’s rosy cheeks and she was mightily pleased.
She sat at her father’s side to the right of the president, with
Michael across the table. Well he bore the scrutiny of Endicott’s keen
eyes which through all the conversation kept searching the intelligent
face of the boy.
The evening passed like a dream, and Michael lay awake again that night
thinking of all the pleasure in anticipation for the next day. At last,
at last he had some people who in a way he might call his own. They had
cared to come and see him after all the years! His heart swelled with
joy and gratitude.
The guests attended chapel exercises with the students the next
morning, and Michael saw with pride the eyes of his companions turn
toward the beautiful young girl, and look at him almost with envy. The
color mounted into his strong young face, but he sat quietly in his
place and no one would have guessed to look at him, the tumult that was
running riot in his veins. He felt it was the very happiest day of his
life.
After chapel the guests were shown about the college buildings and
campus. The president and Endicott walked ahead, Michael behind with
Starr, answering her interested questions.
They had been through all the classrooms, the gymnasium, the dining
hall, servants’ quarters and dormitories. They had visited the athletic
ground, the tennis courts, and gone down by the little lake, where
Michael had taken them out for a short row. Returning they were met by
one of the professors who suggested their going to hear some of the
classes recite, and as Mr. Endicott seemed interested they turned their
steps toward the recitation hall.
“I think,” said Starr as they walked slowly across the campus together,
“that you must be a very brave boy. To think of you saving my life that
way when you were just a little fellow!”
She looked up, her pretty face full of childish feeling.
Michael looked down silently and smiled. He was wondering if any eyes
were ever as beautiful as those before him. He had never had even a
little girl look at him like that. The president’s daughter was fat and
a romp. She never took time to look at the boys. The few other girls he
knew, daughters of the professors, were quiet and studious. They paid
little attention to the boys.
“I want to thank you for what you did,” went on Starr, “only I can’t
think of any words great enough to tell you how I feel about it. I wish
there was something I could do to show you how I thank you?”
She lifted her sweet eyes again to his. They were entering the large
Hall of the college now.
“This way,” said Michael guiding her toward the chapel door which had
just swung to behind the two men.
“Isn’t there something you would like that I could do for you?”
persisted Starr earnestly, following him into the empty chapel where
Mr. Endicott and the president stood looking at a tablet on the wall by
the further door.
“Your father has done everything for me,” said Michael sunnily, with a
characteristic sweep of his hand that seemed to include himself, his
garments and his mental outfit. He turned upon her his blazing smile
that spoke more eloquently than words could have done.
“Yes, but that is papa,” said Starr half impatiently, softly stamping
her daintily shod foot. “He did that because of what you did for _him_
in saving my life. I should like to do something to thank you for what
you did for _me_. I’m worth something to myself you know. Isn’t there
something I could do for you.”
She stood still, looking up into his face anxiously, her vivid childish
beauty seeming to catch all the brightness of the place and focus it
upon him. The two men had passed out of the further door and on to the
recitation rooms. The girl and boy were alone for the moment.
“You have done something for me, you did a great deal,” he said, his
voice almost husky with boyish tenderness. “I think it was the greatest
thing that anybody ever did for me.”
“I did something for you! When? What?” questioned Starr curiously.
“Yes,” he said, “you did a great thing for me. Maybe you don’t remember
it, but I do. It was when I was getting well from the shot there at
your house, and your nurse used to bring you up to play with me every
day; and always before you went away, you used to kiss me. I’ve never
forgotten that.”
He said it quite simply as if it were a common thing for a boy to say
to a girl. His voice was low as though the depths of his soul were
stirred.
A flood of pretty color came into Starr’s cheeks.
“Oh!” she said quite embarrassed at the turn of the conversation, “but
that was when I was a baby. I couldn’t do that now. Girls don’t kiss
boys you know. It wouldn’t be considered proper.”
“I know,” said Michael, his own color heightening now, “I didn’t mean
that. I wanted you to know how much you had done for me already. You
don’t know what it is never to have been kissed by your mother, or any
living soul. Nobody ever kissed me in all my life that I know of but
you.”
He looked down at the little girl with such a grave, sweet expression,
his eyes so expressive of the long lonely years without woman’s love,
that child though she was Starr seemed to understand, and her whole
young soul went forth in pity. Tears sprang to her eyes.
“Oh!” she said, “That is dreadful! Oh!—I don’t care if it isn’t
proper—”
And before he knew what she was about to do the little girl tilted to
her tiptoes, put up her dainty hands, caught him about the neck and
pressed a warm eager kiss on his lips. Then she sprang away frightened,
sped across the room, and through the opposite door.
Michael stood still in a bewilderment of joy for the instant. The
compelling of her little hands, the pressure of her fresh lips still
lingered with him. A flood tide of glory swept over his whole being.
There were tears in his eyes, but he did not know it. He stood with
bowed head as though in a holy place. Nothing so sacred, so beautiful,
had ever come into his life. Her baby kisses had been half unconscious.
This kiss was given of her own free will, because she wanted to do
something for him. He did not attempt to understand the wonderful joy
that surged through his heart and pulsed in every fibre of his being.
His lonely, unloved life was enough to account for it, and he was only
a boy with a brief knowledge of life; but he knew enough to enshrine
that kiss in his heart of hearts as a holy thing, not even to be
thought about carelessly.
When he roused himself to follow her she had disappeared. Her father
and the president were listening to a recitation, but she was nowhere
to be seen. She had gone to her own room. Michael went down by himself
in a thicket by the lake.
She met him shyly at dinner, with averted gaze and a glow on her
cheeks, as if half afraid of what she had done, but he reassured her
with his eyes. His glance seemed to promise he would never take
advantage of what she had done. His face wore an exalted look, as if he
had been lifted above earth, and Starr, looking at him wonderingly, was
glad she had followed her impulse.
They took a horseback ride to the college grove that afternoon, Mr.
Endicott, one of the professors, Starr and Michael. The president had
borrowed the horses from some friends.
Michael sat like a king upon his horse. He had ridden the college mule
bareback every summer, and riding seemed to be as natural to him as any
other sport. Starr had been to a New York riding school, and was
accustomed to taking her morning exercise with her father in the Park,
or accompanied by a footman; but she sat her Florida pony as happily as
though he had been a shiny, well-groomed steed of priceless value.
Somehow it seemed to her an unusually delightful experience to ride
with this nice boy through the beautiful shaded road of arching
live-oaks richly draped with old gray moss. Michael stopped by the
roadside, where the shade was dense, dismounted and plunged into the
thicket, returning in a moment with two or three beautiful orchids and
some long vines of the wonderful yellow jessamine whose exquisite
perfume filled all the air about. He wreathed the jessamine about the
pony’s neck, and Starr twined it about her hat and wore the orchids in
her belt.
Starr had never seen an orange grove before and took great delight in
the trees heavily loaded with fruit, green and yellow and set about by
blossoms. She tucked a spray of blossoms in her dark hair under the
edge of her hat, and Michael looked at her and smiled in admiration.
Mr. Endicott, glancing toward his daughter, caught the look, and was
reminded of the time when he had found the two children in his own
drawing room being made a show for his wife’s guests, and sighed half
in pleasure, half in foreboding. What a beautiful pair they were to be
sure, and what had the future in store for his little girl?
On the way back they skirted another lake and Michael dismounted again
to bring an armful of great white magnolia blossoms, and dainty bay
buds to the wondering Starr; and then they rode slowly on through the
wooded, road, the boy telling tales of adventures here and there;
pointing out a blue jay or calling attention to the mocking bird’s
song.
“I wish you could be here next week,” said the boy wistfully. “It will
be full moon then. There is no time to ride through this place like a
moonlight evening. It seems like fairyland then. The moonbeams make
fairy ladders of the jessamine vines.”
“It must be beautiful,” said Starr dreamily. Then they rode for a few
minutes in silence. They were coming to the end of the overarched
avenue. Ahead of them the sunlight shone clearly like the opening of a
great tunnel framed in living green. Suddenly Starr looked up gravely:
“I’m going to kiss you good-bye tonight when, we go away,” she said
softly; and touching her pony lightly with the whip rode out into the
bright road; the boy, his heart leaping with joy, not far behind her.
Before supper Mr. Endicott had a talk with Michael that went further
toward making the fatherless boy feel that he had someone belonging to
him than anything that had happened yet.
“I think you have done enough for me, sir,” said Michael respectfully
opening the conversation as Endicott came out to the porch where the
boy was waiting for him. “I think I ought to begin to earn my own
living. I’m old enough now—” and he held his head up proudly. “It’s
been very good of you all these years—I never can repay you. I hope you
will let me pay the money back that you have spent on me, some day
when, I can earn enough—”
Michael had been thinking this speech out ever since the president had
told him of Endicott’s expected visit, but somehow it did not sound as
well to him when he said it as he had thought it would. It seemed the
only right thing to do when he planned it, but in spite of him as he
looked into Mr. Endicott’s kind, keen eyes, his own fell in troubled
silence. Had his words sounded ungrateful? Had he seen a hurt look in
the man’s eyes?
“Son,” said Endicott after a pause, and the word stirred the boy’s
heart strangely, “son, I owe you a debt you never can repay. You gave
me back my little girl, flinging your own life into the chance as
freely as if you had another on hand for use any minute. I take it that
I have at least a father’s right in you at any rate, and I mean to
exercise it until you are twenty-one. You must finish a college course
first. When will that be? Three years? They tell me you are doing well.
The doctor wants to keep you here to teach after you have graduated,
but I had thought perhaps you would like to come up to New York and
have your chance. I’ll give you a year or two in business, whatever
seems to be your bent when you are through, and then we’ll see. Which
would you rather do? Or, perhaps you’d prefer to let your decision rest
until the time comes.”
“I think I’m bound to go back to New York, sir,” said Michael lifting
his head with that peculiar motion all his own, so like a challenge.
“You know, sir, you said I was to be educated so that I might help my
friends. I have learned of course that you meant it in a broader sense
than just those few boys, for one can help people anywhere; but still I
feel as if it wouldn’t be right for me not to go back. I’m sure they’ll
expect me.”
Endicott shrugged his shoulders half admiringly.
“Loyal to your old friends still? Well, that’s commendable, but still I
fancy you’ll scarcely find them congenial now. I wouldn’t let them hang
too closely about you. They might become a nuisance. You have your way
to make in the world, you know.”
Michael looked at his benefactor with troubled brows. Somehow the tone
of the man disturbed him.
“I promised,” he said simply. Because there had bean so little in his
affections that promise had been cherished through the years, and meant
much to Michael. It stood for Principle and Loyalty in general.
“Oh, well, keep your promise, of course,” said the man of the world
easily. “I fancy you will find the discharge of it a mere form.”
A fellow student came across the campus.
“Endicott,” he called, “have you seen Hallowell go toward the village
within a few minutes?”
“He just want, out the gate,” responded Michael pleasantly.
Mr. Endicott looked up surprised.
“Is that the name by which you are known?”
“Endicott? Yes, sir, Michael Endicott. Was it not by your wish? I
supposed they had asked you. I had no other name that I knew.”
“Ah! I didn’t know,” pondered Endicott.
There was silence for a moment.
“Would you,—shall I—do you dislike my having it?” asked the boy
delicately sensitive at once.
But the man looked up with something like tenderness in his smile.
“Keep it, son. I like it. I wish I had a boy like you. It is an old
name and a proud one. Be worthy of it.”
“I will try, sir,” said Michael, as if he were registering a vow.
There was an early supper for the guests and then Michael walked
through another sunset to the station with Starr. He carried a small
box carefully prepared in which reposed a tiny green and blue lizard
for a parting gift. She had watched the lizards scuttling away under
the board sidewalks at their approach, or coming suddenly to utter
stillness, changing their brilliant colors to gray like the fence
boards that they might not be observed. She was wonderfully interested
in them, and was charmed with her gift. The particular lizard in
question was one that Michael had trained to eat crumbs from his hand,
and was quite tame.
The two said little as they walked along together. Each was feeling
what a happy time they had spent in one another’s company.
“I shall write and tell you how the lizard is,” said Starr laughing,
“and you will tell me all about the funny and interesting things you
are doing, won’t you?”
“If—I may,” said Michael wistfully.
At the station a New York acquaintance of the Endicotts’ invited them
to ride in his private car which was on the side track waiting for the
train to pick them up. Michael helped Starr up the steps, and carried
the lizard into the car as well as the great sheaf of flowers she
insisted on taking with her.
There were some ladies inside who welcomed Starr effusively; and
Michael, suddenly abashed, laid down the flowers, lifted his cap and
withdrew. A sudden blank had come upon him. Starr was absorbed by
people from another world than his. He would have no opportunity to say
good-bye—and she had promised—But then of course he ought not to expect
her to do that. She had been very kind to him—
He was going down the steps now. An instant more and he would be on the
cinders of the track.
A sudden rush, a soft cry, caused him to pause on the second step of
the vestibuled car. It was Starr, standing just above him, and her eyes
were shining like her namesake the evening star.
“You were going without good-bye,” she reproved, and her cheeks were
rosy red, but she stood her ground courageously. Placing a soft hand
gently on either cheek as he stood below her, his face almost on a
level with hers, she tilted his head toward her and touched his lips
with her own red ones, delicately as if a rose had swept them.
Simultaneously came the sound of the distant train.
“Good-bye, you nice, splendid boy!” breathed Starr, and waving her hand
darted inside the car.
Mr. Endicott, out on the platform, still talking to the president,
heard the oncoming train and looked around for Michael. He saw him
coming from the car with his exalted look upon his face, his cap off,
and the golden beams of the sun again sending their halo like a nimbus
over his hair.
Catching his hand heartily, he said:
“Son, I’m pleased with you. Keep it up, and come to me when you are
ready. I’ll give you a start.”
Michael gripped his hand and blundered out some words of thanks. Then
the train was upon them, and Endicott had to go.
The two younger ladies in the car, meantime, were plying Starr with
questions. “Who is that perfectly magnificent young man. Starr
Endicott? Why didn’t you introduce him to us? I declare I never saw
such a beautiful face on any human being before.”
A moment more and the private car was fastened to the train, and Starr
leaning from the window waved her tiny handkerchief until the train had
thundered away among the pines, and there was nothing left but the echo
of its sound. The sun was going down but it mattered not. There was
sunshine in the boy’s heart. She was gone, his little Starr, but she
had left the memory of her soft kiss and her bright eyes; and some day,
some day, when he was done with college, he would see her again.
Meantime he was content.