After years of passing by the house of a family who came out and smiled and waved to him each day, the train engineer has decided to pay them a visit. Now that he's retired, he doesn't just have to smile and wave at them; he can actually sit down and talk to them and find out more about them. As it is, the engineer feels he knows a lot about them already. Passing by their house each day he gained a prevailed insight into their lives which always made him intensely curious to find out more.

But when the engineer shows up at the family's house, he is in for a nasty surprise. Far from receiving the warm welcome he'd expected, he's treated with cold and sullen indifference. The lady of the house, who had always smiled and waved at him when he rode past on his train, now has a miserable, pinched expression on her face. She peers at the engineer with suspicion, as if he's some kind of criminal. As the engineer sits in the parlor, feeling uncomfortable and regretting that he ever came, he's stared at by the lady of the house and her daughter.

Stunned by this terrible ordeal, the engineer walks away from the house, feeling so terribly old all of a sudden. His heart is sick with doubt and horror as he realizes that he never really knew this part of the world at all, no matter how many times he'd traveled through it on his train. The engineer has become thoroughly disillusioned by the whole experience, so much so that his previously positive evaluation of humanity has changed forever.