The boat was in from New Bedford. Riding high at the end of the pier, sending up great gusts of black smoke into the bright midafternoon air, it shut off all view of the wide seascape and the open sea beyond. Curiously it resembled a piece of stage scenery, a prop boat in an operetta; if one ventured behind the painted canvas, stage hands would be discovered, shooting craps among the slats and ropes. Heedless that it might be illusion, the passengers streamed off to the steamer.

John Grandin stood in the cinder path, waiting. The Boston train was due at any moment. The Howards passed. Catching his glance, Mrs. Howard gave him a meaningless exaggerated shrug, as if in answer to a question she hadn’t quite been able to get—one of those pointless gestures in passing which are yet a kind of social exchange.

Down the track in the opposite direction from which he had come, rolling slowly along under the great willow and cottonwood trees, its chuffing panting engine sending the hanging branches swinging upward, came the train from Boston. With gigantic sighs and groans it rolled to a stop. In the pleasantest agitation, he waited while the passengers climbed down. Seeing that the Nantucket boat was under steam, they hurried along the pier as if they expected the gangplank to be thrown back on the landing at once. Grandin stood watching for his wife. As the crowd thinned out, he was gradually filled with misgiving. Was it possible she had missed connections in Boston? The last of the passengers had left the train; workmen had begun at one end to sweep out. Bitterly disappointed, he looked up helplessly at the empty cars. There was still no Ethel in sight.

Worse than disappointed, he was angry. His chagrin turned at once to anger that Ethel should have been so careless as to miss the train in Boston; it was so unlike her. Now what was he going to do? Wait all night in Woods Hole till the next train in the morning? He gazed miserably at the steamer, its decks crowded to the rail, and felt helpless to decide what ought to be done. It was a bad start for the long-­promised holiday, perhaps even a bad sign—or was there going to be any holiday at all? He could never have anticipated such a turn of events as this; he did not know when he had been so disappointed. Husbandlike, it did not occur to him to worry; his only feeling was one of anger that she had been late in Boston.