Judith of the Plains

Harper & Brothers Publishers
New York And London
Copyright, 1903. By Harper & Brothers
Printed In The United States Of America
Peter’s Hand Sought Hers, And All Her Woman’s Fear Of The Vague Terrors Of The Dreadful Night Spoke In Her Answering Pressure.
It was June, and a little past sunrise, but there was no hint of early summer freshness in the noxious air of the sleeping-car as it toiled like a snail over the infinity of prairie. From behind the green-striped curtains of the berths, now the sound of restless turning and now a long-drawn sigh signified the uneasy slumber due to stifling air and discomfort.
The only passenger stirring was a girl whose youth drooped under the unfavorable influences of foul air, fatigue, and a strained anxiety to come to the end of this fateful journey. She had been up while it was yet dark, and her hand—luggage, locked, strapped, and as pitifully new at the art of travelling as the girl herself, clustered about the hem of her blue serge skirt like chicks about a hen. The engine shrieked, but its voice sounded weak and far off in that still ocean of space; the girl tightened her grasp on the largest of the satchels and looked at the approaching porter tentatively.
“We’re late twenty-fi’e minutes,” he reassured her, with the hopeless patience of one who has lost heart in curbing travellers’ enthusiasms.
She turned towards the window a pair of shoulders plainly significant of the burdensome last straw.
“Four days and nights in this train”—they were slower in those days—“and now this extra twenty-five minutes!”
Miss Carmichael’s famous dimple hid itself in disgust. The demure lines of mouth and chin, that could always be relied upon for special pleading when sentence was about to be passed on the dimple by those who disapproved of dimples, drooped with disappointment. But the light-brown hair continued to curl facetiously—it was the sort of hair whose spontaneous rippling conveys to the seeing eye a sense of humor.