“Would you like to join a party at bridge, if I can start a game?” you ask. Her first impulse is to refuse; not from caution, but from inertia. It’s the same feeling that made her turn down the man with the cap on his last journey when she really wanted a bar of Hershey’s. But as she shakes her head she changes her mind. Bridge! Something to do!
“Why—yes, I guess so.” And she giggles a little, from shyness.
“Good! I’ll get someone else and be back in a minute.” But you return with bad tidings. Everyone else is already playing.
“I guess we got the idea too late,” you announce, sitting down in the next seat. “I wish I’d thought of it before. There was an old fellow in the back that asked me this morning, but he was getting off at Chicago. Isn’t that where you got on? How far are you going?”
“Colorado. I’m going to get off this train at La Junta.” Whistle.
“You have pretty near as long a ride as I have. I go clear across. Tiresome, isn’t it? I ought to be used to it, but I never am, somehow.”
“Furniture. Wholesale furniture. I’m traveling for a firm in Tucson; Robinson and Company. Have you ever been there?”
“It’s a nice town, but hot right now. I’m lucky to be away. Just had a letter from my—my sister and she says the heat is unbearable. Unbearable.”
She murmurs sympathetically and looks back at the wheat, while you remember that at times you talk too much about yourself. Ah, well then....
“If it isn’t too personal—what part of the country do you hail from?”
“Illinois. Darien. It’s just a little town. I’m going out to Colorado to visit and maybe I’m going to stay. If I can get a job teaching and if I like the country, I mean.”
“Really? Now, I’d have said you were from New York.”
“Why, what a funny idea. Why should you think I’m from New York?”
“Oh, I don’t know. A man in my business gets so he can spot people pretty quickly, and he can’t exactly tell how, nine times out of ten.”
“Yes, second nature. I don’t know just why I did think you were from New York. Your clothes, or perhaps the way you talk. Or the way you know how to take care of yourself.”
“Oh, that’s easy. A man can always tell. You can take care of yourself.”
She blushes and remembers that she is all alone on this train.