Excuse Me! Part 24

Mallory canva.s.sed the men and obtained a shockingly purple shirt from Wedgewood, who meant to put him at his ease, but somehow failed when he said in answer to Mallory's thanks:

"G.o.d bless my soul, old top, don't you think of thanking me. I ought to thank you. You see, the idiot who makes my shirts, made that by mistake, and I'd be no end grateful if you'd jolly well take the loathsome thing off my hands. I mean to say, I shouldn't dream of being seen in it myself. You quite understand, don't you?"

Ashton contributed a maroon atrocity in hosiery, with equal tact:

"If they fit you, keep 'em. I got stung on that batch of socks. That pair was originally lavender, but they washed like that. Keep 'em. I wouldn't be found dead in 'em."

The mysterious Fosd.i.c.k, who lived a lonely life in the Observation car and slept in the other sleeper, lent Mallory a pair of pyjamas evidently intended for a bridegroom of romantic disposition. Mallory blushed as he accepted them and when he found himself in them, he whisked out the light, he was so ashamed of himself.

Once more the whole car gaped at the unheard of behavior of its newly wedded pair. The poor porter had been hungry for a bridal couple, but as he went about gathering up the cast-off footwear of his large family and found Mallory's big shoes at number three and Marjorie's tiny boots at number five, he shook his head and groaned.

"Times has suttainly changed for the wuss if this is a bridal couple, gimme divorcees."

CHAPTER XXI

MATRIMONY TO AND FRO

And the next morning they were in Wyoming--well toward the center of that State. They had left behind the tame levels and the truly rural towns and they were among foothills and mountains, pa.s.sing cities of wildly picturesque repute, like Cheyenne, and Laramie, Bowie, and Medicine Bow, and Bitter Creek, whose very names imply literature and war whoops, cow-boy yelps, barking revolvers, another redskin biting the dust, cattle stampedes, town-paintings, humorous lynchings and bronchos in epileptic frenzy.

But the talk of this train was concerned with none of these wonders, which the novelists and the magazinist have perhaps a trifle overpublished. The talk of this train was concerned with the eighth wonder of the world, a semi-detached bridal couple.

Mrs. Whitcomb was eager enough to voice the sentiment of the whole populace, when she looked up from her novel in the observation room and, nudging Mrs. Temple, drawled: "By the way, my dear, has that bridal couple made up its second night's quarrel yet?"

"The Mallorys?" Mrs. Temple flushed as she answered, mercifully. "Oh, yes, they were very friendly again this morning."

Mrs. Whitcomb's countenance was cynical: "My dear, I've been married twice and I ought to know something about honeymoons, but this honeyless honeymoon----" she cast up her eyes and her hands in despair.

The women were so concerned about Mr. and "Mrs." Mallory, that they hardly noticed the uncomfortable plight of the Wellingtons, or the curious behavior of the lady from the stateroom who seemed to be afraid of something and never spoke to anybody. The strange behavior of Anne Gattle and Ira Lathrop even escaped much comment, though they were forever being stumbled on when anybody went out to the observation platform. When they were dislodged from there, they sat playing checkers and talking very little, but making eyes at one another and sighing like furnaces.

They had evidently concocted some secret of their own, for Ira, looking at his watch, murmured sentimentally to Anne: "Only a few hours more, Annie."

And Anne turned geranium-color and dropped a handful of checkers. "I don't know how I can face it."

Ira growled like a lovesick lion: "Aw, what do you care?"

"But I was never married before, Ira," Anne protested, "and on a train, too."

"Why, all the bridal couples take to the railroads."

"I should think it would be the last place they'd go," said Anne--a sensible woman, Anne! "Look at the Mallories--how miserable they are."

"I thought they were happy," said Ira, whose great virtue it was to pay little heed to what was none of his business.

"Oh, Ira," cried Anne, "I hope we shan't begin to quarrel as soon as we are married."

"As if anybody could quarrel with you, Anne," he said.

"Do you think I'll be so monotonous as that?" she retorted.

Her s.p.u.n.k delighted him beyond words. He whispered: "Anne, you're so gol-darned sweet if I don't get a chance to kiss you, I'll bust."

"Why, Ira--we're on the train."

"Da--darn the train! Who ever heard of a fellow proposing and getting engaged to a girl and not even kissing her."

"But our engagement is so short."

"Well, I'm not going to marry you till I get a kiss."

Perhaps innocent old Anne really believed this blood-curdling threat.

It brought her instantly to terms, though she blushed: "But everybody's always looking."

"Come out on the observation platform."

"Oh, Ira, again?"

"I dare you."

"I take you--but" seeing that Mrs. Whitcomb was trying to overhear, she whispered: "let's pretend it's the scenery."

So Ira rose, pushed the checkers aside, and said in an unusually positive tone: "Ah, Miss Gattle, won't you have a look at the landscape?"

"Oh, thank you, Mr. Lathrop," said Anne, "I just love scenery."

They wandered forth like the Sleeping Beauty and her princely awakener, and never dreamed what gigglings and nudgings and wise head-noddings went on back of them. Mrs. Wellington laughed loudest of all at the lovers whose heads had grown gray while their hearts were still so green.

It was shortly after this that the Wellingtons themselves came into prominence in the train life.

As the train approached Green River, and its copper-basined stream, the engineer began to set the air-brakes for the stop. Jimmie Wellington, boozily half-awake in the smoking room, wanted to know what the name of the station was. Everybody is always eager to oblige a drunken man, so Ashton and Fosd.i.c.k tried to get a window open to look out.

The first one they labored at, they could not budge after a biceps-breaking tug. The second flew up with such ease that they went over backward. Ashton put his head out and announced that the approaching depot was labelled "Green River." Wellington burbled: "What a beautiful name for a shtation."

Ashton announced that there was something beautifuller still on the platform--"Oh, a peach!--a nectarine! and she's getting on this train."

Even Doctor Temple declared that she was a dear little thing, wasn't she?

Wellington pushed him aside, saying: "Stand back, Doc., and let me see; I have a keen sense of beau'ful."

"Be careful," cried the doctor, "he'll fall out of the window."

"Not out of that window," Ashton sagely observed, seeing the bulk of Wellington. As the train started off again, Little Jimmie distributed alcoholic smiles to the Green Riverers on the platform and called out:

"Goo'bye, ever'body. You're all abslootly--ow! ow!" He clapped his hand to his eye and crawled back into the car, groaning with pain.

"What's the matter," said Wedgewood. "Got something in your eye?"