It
shivered down the long stovepipe, too, inside the waiting-room. The
stove had been kept red-hot all that dull gray afternoon, but the
window-panes were still white with heavy frost-work.
Half an hour before the five o'clock train was due from the city, two
boys came running up the railroad track with their skates in their
hands. They were handsome, sturdy little fellows, so well buttoned up in
their leather leggins and warm reefer overcoats that they scarcely felt
the cold. Their cheeks were red as winter apples, from skating against
the wind, and they were almost breathless after their long run up-hill
to the depot. Racing across the platform, they bumped against the door
at the same instant, burst it noisily open, and slammed it behind them
with a bang that shook the entire building.
"What kind of a cyclone has struck us now?" growled the ticket agent,
who was in the next room. Then he frowned, as the first noise was
followed by the rasping sound of a bench being dragged out of a corner,
to a place nearer the stove. It scraped the bare floor every inch of the
way, with a jarring motion that made the windows rattle.
Stretching himself half-way out of his chair, the ticket agent pushed up
the wooden slide of the little window far enough for him to peep into
the waiting-room. Then he hastily shoved it down again.
"It's the two little chaps who came out from the city last week," he
said to the station-master.
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