"I like to hear you talk," returned Mary Leonard, laughing. "If there ever was anybody that just went through the world having people do things for 'em, it's you, Lucy Eastman, and you know it."
"Oh, but I know so few people," said the other, hastily. "I'm not ungrateful—I'm sure I've no call to be; but I know so few people, and they've known me all my life; it's not like strangers."
"That hasn't anything to do with it," affirmed Mary Leonard, stoutly; "if there were more, it would be the same way. But I will say," she went on, "that I never could see why a woman travelling alone should ever have any trouble—officials and everybody are so polite about telling you the same thing over. I don't know why it is, but I always seem to expect the next one I ask to tell me something different about a train; and then everybody you meet seems just as pleasant as can be."
"Yes," assented Lucy Eastman, "like that baggageman. Did you notice how polite the baggageman was?"
"Notice it! Why, of course I did. And our trunks were late, and it was my fault, and so I told him, and he just hurried to pull them around and check them, and I was so confused, you know, that I made him check the wrong ones twice."
"Well, they were just like ours," said Lucy Eastman, sympathetically.
"Well, they were, weren't they? But of course I ought to have known. And he never swore at all. I was dreadfully afraid he'd swear, Lucy."
"Oh, dear!" exclaimed Lucy Eastman, distressed, "what would you have done if he'd sworn?"
"I'm sure I don't know," asserted Mary Leonard, with conviction, "but fortunately he didn't."
"He got very warm," said Lucy, reminiscently. "I saw him wiping his brow as we came away."