When again the seat was free, he
fell to thinking of the unknown home, Grey Pine, which he had heard his
mother talk of to English friends as "our ancestral home," and of the
great forests, the mines and the iron-works. Her son would, of course,
inherit it, as Captain Penhallow had no child. "Really a great estate,
my dear," his mother had said. It loomed large in his young imagination.
Who would meet him? Probably a carriage with the liveried driver and the
groom immaculate in white-topped boots, a fur cover on his arm. It would,
of course, be Captain Penhallow who would make him welcome. Then the
cold, which is hostile to imagination, made him shiver as he drew his
thin cloak about him and watched the snow squadrons wind-driven and the
big flakes blurring his view as they melted on the panes. By and by, two
giggling young women near by made comments on his looks and dress.
Fragments of their talk he overheard. It was not quite pleasant. "Law!
ain't he got curly hair, and ain't he just like a girl doll," and so on
in the lawless freedom of democratic feminine speech. The flat Morocco
cap and large visor of the French schoolboy and the dark blue cloak with
the silver clasp were subjects of comment. One of them offered peanuts or
sugar-plums, which he declined with "Much obliged, but I never take
them.
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