RAILROADER
CHAPTER I
CALEB CONOVER RECEIVES
“The poor man!” sighed Mrs. Greer. “He must think he’s a cemetery!”
The long line of carriages was passing solemnly through a mighty white marble arch, aglare with electric light, leading into the “show place” of Pompton Avenue.
Athwart the arch’s pallid face, in raised letters a full foot in length were the words:
“CALEB CONOVER, R.R., 1893.”
In the ghastly, garish illumination, above the slow-moving procession of sombre vehicles, the arch and its inscription gave gruesome excuse for Mrs. Greer’s comment. She herself thought the phrase rather apt, and stored it away for repetition.
Her husband, a downy little man, curled up miserably in the other corner of the brougham, read her thought, from long experience, and twisted forward into what he liked to think was a commanding attitude.
“Look here!” he protested. “You’ve got to stop that. It’s bad enough to have to come here at all, without your spoiling everything with one of those Bernard Shawisms of yours. Why, if it ever got back to Conover’s ears——”
“He’d withdraw his support? And then good-by to Congress for the unfortunate Talbot Firth Greer?”