At night he dreamed of the school teacher and
when he awoke, pretended she was with him in his bedroom. He put out his
hand and touched the pillow. It was soft and smooth as he imagined the
cheek of a woman would be. He did not know the school teacher's name but
invented one for her. "Be quiet, Elizabeth. Do not let me disturb your
sleep," he murmured into the darkness. One evening he went to the house
where the school teacher boarded and stood in the shadow of a tree until he
saw her come out and go toward Main Street. Then he went by a roundabout
way and walked past her on the sidewalk before the lighted stores. He did
not look at her, but in passing her dress touched his arm and he was so
excited later that he could not sleep and spent half the night walking
about and thinking of the wonderful thing that had happened to him.
The ticket, express, and freight agent for the Wheeling and Lake Erie at
Bidwell, a man named George Pike, lived in one of the houses near the
station, and besides attending to his duties for the railroad company,
owned and worked a small farm. He was a slender, alert, silent man with a
long drooping mustache. Both he and his wife worked as Hugh had never seen
a man and woman work before. Their arrangement of the division of labor
was not based on sex but on convenience. Sometimes Mrs. Pike came to the
station to sell tickets, load express boxes and trunks on the passenger
trains and deliver heavy boxes of freight to draymen and farmers, while her
husband worked in the fields back of his house or prepared the evening
meal, and sometimes the matter was reversed and Hugh did not see Mrs.
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