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Just as there sounded from outside the conductor’s order: “All aboard!” and the people came hurrying back into the car, Jessica forced her way among them to where the old man sat and catching the baby from his arms, cried in a very ecstasy of joy:

“O you blessed old ‘Forty-niner!’ That isn’t the way to hold a baby! see me!”

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Mr. Hale never forgot that railway trip.

To rouse Jessica Trent from her sorrow at leaving home he had suggested her helping others; and so thoroughly did she follow his advice that he soon had a dozen people depending upon him for counsel and comfort. Quoth that young traveler, in the very presence of the ailing mother of the tourist car:

“We are so much better off in our ‘Arizona,’ dear Mr. Hale. Let’s take this poor little woman and this precious baby right back there with us. She can have my own soft seat with you and I can sit with Mrs. Moriarty, as she wanted me to do. Dear Mr. Marsh—Well, he must be with us in there, too. If he loved me so well he would hide away from the others and come all the way to the other ocean, just because he couldn’t live without me, course, I can’t live without him. Why he didn’t tell them was—was just because.”