One spring day, when the daffodils were blowing on the Ingleside lawn,
and the banks of the brook in Rainbow Valley were sweet with white and
purple violets, the little, lazy afternoon accommodation train pulled
into the Glen station. It was very seldom that passengers for the Glen
came by that train, so nobody was there to meet it except the new
station agent and a small black-and-yellow dog, who for four and a half
years had met every train that had steamed into Glen St. Mary. Thousands
of trains had Dog Monday met and never had the boy he waited and watched
for returned. Yet still Dog Monday watched on with eyes that never quite
lost hope. Perhaps his dog-heart failed him at times; he was growing old
and rheumatic; when he walked back to his kennel after each train had
gone his gait was very sober now--he never trotted but went slowly with
a drooping head and a depressed tail that had quite lost its old saucy
uplift.
One passenger stepped off the train--a tall fellow in a faded
lieutenant's uniform, who walked with a barely perceptible limp. He had
a bronzed face and there were some grey hairs in the ruddy curls that
clustered around his forehead. The new station agent looked at him
anxiously. He was used to seeing the khaki-clad figures come off the
train, some met by a tumultuous crowd, others, who had sent no word of
their coming, stepping off quietly like this one.
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