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discolored door-facing, she hurried out to join her. Lindsay did not at first connect the unusual crowd in and around the little station with his sister's departure; but the young people at once formed a circle around her, into which one and another older person entered and retired again with about the same expressions of affectionate regret and good wishes. He had known them all so long! But, except for the growing up of the younger boys and girls during his five years of absence, they were to him still what they had been since he was a child, affecting him still with the old depressing sense of distance and dislike. The grammarless speech of the men, the black-rimmed nails of Stella's schoolmaster--a good classical scholar, but heedless as he was good-hearted,--jarred upon him, indeed, with the discomfort of a new experience. Upon his own slender, erect figure, clothed in poor but well-fitting garments, gentleman was written as plainly as in words, just as idealist was written on his forehead and the other features which thought had chiselled perhaps too finely for his years. The brightness had come back to Stella's face, and he could not but feel grateful to the men who had left their shops and dingy little stores to bid her good-by, and to the placid, kindly-faced women ranged along the settees against the wall and conversing in low tones about how she would be missed; but the noisy flock of young people, who with their chorus of expostulations, assurances, and prophecies seemed to make her one of themselves, filled him with strong displeasure. He knew how foolish it would be for him to show it, but he could get no further in his effort at concealment than a cold silence which was itself significant enough. A tall youth with bold and handsome features and a pretty girl in a showy red muslin ignored him altogether, with a pride which really quite overmatched his own; but the rest shrank back a little as he passed looking after the checks and tickets, either cutting short their sentences at his approach or missing the point of what they had to say. The train seemed to him long in coming. His stepmother moved to the end of the settee and made a place for him at her side. "Lindsay," she said, under cover of the talk and laughter, and speaking with some difficulty, "I hope you will be able to carry out all your plans for yourself and Stella; but while you're making the money, she will have to make the friends. Don'
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