When the attention of these two was concentrated, for a moment, upon each other, he asked Joan: “Is anything wrong, Miss Arnold? You look worried. You hadn’t ought to look worried, ever.”
She laughed. “Why, no, of course not. I—must have been thinking. I didn’t know.”
“Thinking about what?”
“I don’t remember.”
Wint had climbed out of the car and was talking to some one on the platform a dozen feet away. Gergue looked toward him, then back to Joan. But he said no more.
“Isn’t the train late?” Agnes asked, forsaking Routt abruptly.
Gergue nodded. “Ten minutes. Dan says they got a hot box, or something, up above the Crossroads.”
Agnes pouted. “They’re always late.”
“They’re whistling now,” Gergue assured her, and a moment later every one heard the distant blast. “At the crossing beyond the cemetery,” Gergue supplemented. “Be here right away.” And he turned back to the crowd.
A moment later, they heard the whistle again, this time where the B. & O. and D. T. & I. crossed; and after a further interval, the train came in sight, rounding the last curve into the station. Agnes jumped out of the car, touching Routt’s extended hand when he sought to assist her; and then the engine roared and racketed past, vomiting sparks and cinders over them all.