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“Why, Uncle Hank, you know The-Boy-On-The-Train, he couldn’t quite—what I said—understand all that the birds were talking about.”

“Couldn’t he, Pettie?” inquired Hank placidly.

“No,” said Hilda with solemnity. “He might just as well have, but he couldn’t. He could just understand what people said; but—” The small face flushed deeply; word forms rushed fluidly about in the stress and flux of her emotion—“but he understanded that awful good.”

If Hilda had come to a group of children, The-Boy-On-The-Train must have grown dim behind the stirring realities of actual companionship. But in the lonely life that began for her now, he filled in many an hour which might be otherwise forlorn. He did not lose vividness. She saw him at that ranch he had spoken of, riding the marvelous pony which would shake hands, perfecting himself in those manly sports upon which he had casually touched, and which her lively fancy was liberally providing for him. As time went on, he grew of course; yet he remained delightfully a boy, her champion and hero in the dream world which was always so real to the imaginative child.