a searched for her purse and emptied its hoard
into one gloved hand. Coins spilled from this and ran about the
platform. Hands sprang from the window above her to point out their
resting places, and half a dozen of the creatures issued from the car to
recover them for her. Flustered, eager, pleasantly shocked at her own
daring, Winona distributed gifts from the basket, seeing only the hands
that came forth to receive them.

Chewing gum, candy, popcorn, figs--even cigarettes--and Winona the first
vice-president and recording secretary of Newbern's anti-tobacco
league! War was assuredly what Sherman had so pithily described it, for
she now sent the vender back to replenish his stock of cigarettes, and
bought and bestowed them upon immature boys so long as her coin lasted.
Their laughter was noisy, their banter of one another and of Winona was
continuous, and Winona laughed, even bantered. That she should banter
strangers in a public place! She felt rowdy, but liked it.

There was a call from the front of the train, and the group about her
sprang to the platform as the cars began to move, waving her gracious,
almost condescending adieus, as happy people who go upon a wondrous
journey will wave to poor stay-at-homes. Winona waved wildly now, being
lost to all decorum; waved to the crowded platform and then to the cloud
of heads at the window above her.

From this window a hand reached down to her--a lean, hard, brown
hand--and the shy, smiling eyes of the boy who reached it sought hers in
something like appeal. Winona clutched the hand and gripped it as she
had never gripped a human hand before.

"Good-bye, sister!" said the boy, and Winona went a dozen steps with the
train, still grasping the hand.

"Good-bye, good-bye, good-bye--all of you!" she called, and was holding
the hand with both her own when the train gathered speed and took it
from her grasp.

She stood then watching other windows thronged with young heads as the
train bore them on; she still waved and was waved at. Faint strains of
the resumed chorus drifted back to her. Her face was hurting with a set
smile.

She stumbled back across the platform, avoiding other groups who had
cheered the passing train, and found sanctuary by a baggage truck loaded
with crates of live chickens. Here she wept unnoticed, and wondered why
she was weeping. Later, in her own train, she looked down and observed
the white-ribboned badge which she had valiantly pinned above he