Excuse Me! Part 15

They gossiped across the chasm of years about people and things, and knew nothing of the excitement so close to them, saw nothing of Chicago slipping back into the distance, with its many lights shooting across the windows like hurled torches.

Suddenly a twinge of ancient jealousy shot through the man's heart, recurring to old emotions.

"So you're not married, Annie. Whatever became of that fellow who used to hang round you all the time?"

"Charlie Selby?" She blushed at the name, and thrilled at the luxury of meeting jealousy. "Oh, he entered the church. He's a minister out in Ogden, Utah."

"I always knew he'd never amount to much," was Lathrop's epitaph on his old rival. Then he started with a new twinge: "You bound for Ogden, too?"

"Oh, no," she smiled, enraptured at the new sensation of making a man anxious, and understanding all in a flash the motives that make coquettes. Then she told him her destination. "I'm on my way to China."

"China!" he exclaimed. "So'm I!"

She stared at him with a new thought, and gushed: "Oh, Ira--are you a missionary, too?"

"Missionary? h.e.l.l, no!" he roared. "Excuse me--I'm an importer--Anne, I--I----"

But the sonorous swear reverberated in their ears like a smitten bell, and he blushed for it, but could not recall it.

CHAPTER XII

THE NEEDLE IN THE HAYSTACK

The almost-married couple sat long in mutual terror and a common paralysis of ingenuity. Marjorie, for lack of anything better to do, was absent-mindedly twisting Snoozleums's ears, while he, that pocket abridgment of a dog, in a well meaning effort to divert her from her evident grief, made a great pretence of ferocity, growling and threatening to bite her fingers off. The new ring attracted his special jealousy. He was growing discouraged at the ill-success of his impersonation of a wolf, and dejected at being so cra.s.sly ignored, when he suddenly became, in his turn, a center of interest.

Marjorie was awakened from her trance of inanition by the porter's voice. His plantation voice was ordinarily as thick and sweet as his own New Orleans sorghum, but now it had a bitterness that curdled the blood:

"'Scuse me, but how did you-all git that theah dog in this heah cah?"

"Snoozleums is always with me," said Marjorie briskly, as if that settled it, and turned for confirmation to the dog himself, "aren't you, Snoozleums?"

"Well," the porter drawled, trying to be gracious with his great power, "the rules don't 'low no live stock in the sleepin' cars, 'ceptin' humans."

Marjorie rewarded his condescension with a blunt: "Snoozleums is more human than you are."

"I p'sume he is," the porter admitted, "but he can't make up berths.

Anyway, the rules says dogs goes with the baggage."

Marjorie swept rules aside with a defiant: "I don't care. I won't be separated from my Snoozleums."

She looked to Mallory for support, but he was too sorely troubled with greater anxieties to be capable of any action.

The porter tried persuasion: "You betta lemme take him, the conducta is wuss'n what I am. He th'owed a couple of dogs out the window trip befo' last."

"The brute!"

"Oh, ya.s.sum, he is a regulah brute. He just loves to hear 'm splosh when they light."

Noting the s.h.i.+ver that shook the girl, the porter offered a bit of consolation:

"Better lemme have the pore little thing up in the baggage cah. He'll be in charge of a lovely baggage-smasher."

"Are you sure he's a nice man?"

"Oh, ya.s.sum, he's death on trunks, but he's a natural born angel to dogs."

"Well, if I must, I must," she sobbed. "Poor little Snoozleums! Can he come back and see me to-morrow?" Marjorie's tears were splas.h.i.+ng on the puzzled dog, who nestled close, with a foreboding of disaster.

"I reckon p'haps you'd better visit him."

"Poor dear little Snoozleums--good night, my little darling. Poor little child--it's the first night he's slept all by his 'ittle lonesome, and----"

The porter was growing desperate. He clapped his hands together impatiently and urged: "I think I hear that conducta comin'."

The ruse succeeded. Marjorie fairly forced the dog on him.

"Quick--hide him--hurry!" she gasped, and sank on the seat completely crushed. "I'll be so lonesome without Snoozleums."

Mallory felt called upon to remind her of his presence. "I--I'm here, Marjorie." She looked at him just once--at him, the source of all her troubles--buried her head in her arms, and resumed her grief. Mallory stared at her helplessly, then rose and bent over to whisper:

"I'm going to look through the train."

"Oh, don't leave me," she pleaded, clinging to him with a dependence that restored his respect.

"I must find a clergyman," he whispered. "I'll be back the minute I find one, and I'll bring him with me."

[Ill.u.s.tration: MARJORIE FAIRLY FORCED THE DOG ON HIM....]

The porter thought he wanted the dog back, and quickened his pace till he reached the corridor, where Mallory overtook him and asked, in an effort at casual indifference, if he had seen anything of a clergyman on board.

"Ain't seen nothin' that even looks like one," said the porter. Then he hastened ahead to the baggage car with the squirming Snoozleums, while Mallory followed slowly, going from seat to seat and car to car, subjecting all the males to an inspection that rendered some of them indignant, others of them uneasy.

If dear old Doctor Temple could only have known what Mallory was hunting, he would have s.n.a.t.c.hed off the mask, and thrown aside the secular scarlet tie at all costs. But poor Mallory, unable to recognize a clergyman so dyed-in-the-wool as Doctor Temple, sitting in the very next seat--how could he be expected to pick out another in the long and crowded train?

All clergymen look alike when they are in convention a.s.sembled, but sprinkled through a crowd they are not so easily distinguished.

In the sleeping car bound for Portland, Mallory picked one man as a clergyman. He had a lean, ascetic face, solemn eyes, and he was talking to his seat-mate in an oratorical manner. Mallory bent down and tapped the man's shoulder.

The effect was surprising. The man jumped as if he were stabbed, and turned a pale, frightened face on Mallory, who murmured:

"Excuse me, do you happen to be a clergyman?"

A look of relief stole over the man's features, followed closely by a scowl of wounded vanity:

"No, d.a.m.n you, I don't happen to be a parson. I have chosen to be--well, if you had watched the billboards in Chicago during our run, you would not need to ask who I am!"