Jane Oglander

In spite of many a proverb to the contrary, a plan or plot, when carefully imagined andcarried out by an intelligent human being, does not often miscarry or go wrong. The fact that Mrs. Kaye was now sitting staring through the window of the little waitingroom of Selford Junction was the outcome of a plan-what she knew well the one mostconcerned would have called a plot-which had succeeded beyond her expectations. Shehad come there secretly in order that she might see the last, the very last, of her son nowstarting on his way to rejoin his regiment in India. She was here in direct disobedience tohis wish, aware that had he known she would be there he would have found some way ofeluding her vigilance. The plan she had made had succeeded by its very simplicity. After the quiet, measured "Good-bye and God bless you, Bayworth!" uttered by the father tohis only son at the gate of the poverty-stricken garden of the vicarage; after the mother'smore emotional farewell, Mrs. Kaye, leaving her husband to go out into the village, hadhastened back to the house. There she had flung on her shabby bonnet, and waiting amoment till the trap in which her boy was driving to Selford Junction, some four miles off, had turned the corner, she had gone quickly out of the garden. Walking at a rapid pace, forshe was still a vigorous woman, she had taken a short cut across the fields to the smallstation where she knew she would be able to catch the slow local train which was run inconnection with the London express. Once at Selford Junction, it had been a comparatively easy matter for her to slip into thewaiting-room and take up her station close to the grimy window commanding the platformalongside of which the express had already drawn up. Mrs. Kaye had had two motives in doing what she had done. Her first and very naturalmotive was that of seeing the last, the very last, of her son. Her second, which she hid evenfrom herself, was to discover why he had refused, with a certain fierce decision, hercompany as far as Selford Junction, where, ever since he was a little boy bound for his first school, she-his mother-had always gone with him when there had come the hardmoment of saying good-bye. To the tired labourer in the further corner of the waiting-room; to the sickly-looking, wearyworking woman, accompanied by two children, who had unwillingly made way for her, thesight of Mrs. Kaye was familiar, and, in an apathetic way, unpleasing