The station is merely a platform of planks between the hotel and the rails.

The railroad is roughly made; it lies long and straight in a flat land, snow-clad in winter, very dusty in the summer sun, and its line is only softened by a long row of telegraph poles, which seem to waver and tremble as the eye follows their endless repetition into the distance.

In some curious way their repetition lends to the stark road a certain grace.
When Zilda Chaplot was young there were fewer wires on these telegraph poles, fewer railway-lines opposite the station, fewer houses in St.
Armand, which lies half a mile away.

The hotel itself is the same, but in those days it was not painted yellow, as it is now, and was not half so well kept.

The world has progressed by twenty years since mam'selle was a girl, and, also, she owns the place herself now, and is a much better inn-keeper than was her father.
Mam'selle Chaplot is a very active person, tall, and somewhat stout.