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But the man might as well have been talking to a patient under a surgeon's knife. Nessie walked on around the depot platform, then set out through the utter emptiness of the village streets.

The man continued looking at her with a sardonic leer on a face peculiarly adapted to this expression. His name was Nathan Bagley. In his pleasanter moments, Mr. Bagley’s face wore a look of soiled cynicism as if he had learned thoroughly the dubiety of truth, the emptiness of chastity, the futility of kindliness, and the general inadaptability of the virtues to life as it is lived. He was a kind of be-smutted Nathan the Wise. No salacious rumour in Irontown escaped him, and he felt a personal interest in each report.

Now he stood looking after Nessie with a sneer on his face because she had not paused to fall into conversation with him. As she walked away he scrutinized the curve of her ankles, which was the part of a woman he always observed, and snarled loud enough for Nessie to have heard him, "Old skirt, if you think you're too good to talk to me, you've got another think coming!"

The overtures of Mr. Nathan Bagley toward Nessie Sutton at the railroad station were, broadly interpreted, an advance notice served on the girl of village excommunication. The fact that Nessie, in the pain of parting from her lover, did not hear Mr. Bagley's remarks was of little moment; the village could be depended upon to call the matter to her attention later.

It required a number of days for Irontown to formulate its position toward the milliner's assistant. By the different village groups she was discussed lickerishly, scornfully, philosophically; from garage to bank. The monotony of village life was stirred by this touch of colour.

The whole village readjusted its attitude toward the milliner’s assistant under the conviction that she had turned out something different from what they had esteemed her.