Another day the cars were full till you couldn't seem to get even an umbrella into the aisle, I thought, but yet the guards told people to step along lively, and encouraged them by prodding and pinching till most everybody was fighting mad.
Then a pale girl, with a bundle of sewing in her hand, and a hollow cough that made everybody look that way, got into the aisle. She could just barely get hold of the strap, and that was all. She wore a poor, black cotton jersey, and when she reached up so high, the jersey part would not stay where it belonged, and at the waist seemed to throw off all responsibility. She realized it, and bit her lips, and two red spots came on her pale face, and the tears came into her eyes, but she couldn't let go of her bundle, and she couldn't let go of the strap, for already the train threw her against a soiled man on one side and a tough on the other. It was pitiful enough, so that men who had their seats began to read advertisements and other things with their papers wrong side up, in order to seem thoroughly engrossed in their business.
But two pretty young men, with real good clothes, and white, soft hands, had a great deal of fun over it, and every time the train would lurch and throw the poor girl's jersey a little more out of plumb, they would jab each other in the ribs, and laugh very hearty. I felt sorry that I wasn't young again, so that I could go over there and kick both of them. Henry, if I thought you would do a thing like that, or allow it done on the same block where you happened to be, I would give my estate to a charitable object, and refuse to recognize you in Paradise.
Just then an oldish man of a chunky build, and with an eye as black as the driven tomcat, reached through the crowded aisle with his umbrella and touched the girl. She looked around, and he told her to come and take his seat. As she squeezed through, and he rose to seat her, a large man with black whiskers gently dropped into the vacant seat with a sigh of relief, and began to read a two-year-old paper with much earnestness, just as if he hadn't noticed the whole performance. The stout man was thunderstruck. He said:
"Excuse me, sir; I didn't leave my seat."
"Yes, you did," says the black-whiskered pachyderm. "You can't expect to keep a seat here and leave it too."
"Well, but I rose to put this young lady in it, and I must ask you to be kind enough to let her have it."
"Excuse me," said the microbe, with a little chuckle of cussedness, "you will have to take your chances, and wait for a vacant seat, same as I did."
That was all the conversation there was, but just then the short fat man ran his thumb down inside the shirt collar of the yellow fever germ, and jerked him so high that I could see the nails on the bottoms of his boots. Then, with the other hand, he socked the young lady into his seat, and took hold of a strap, where he hung on white and mad, but victorious.
After that there was a loud hurrah, and general enthusiasm and hand clapping, and cries of "Good!" "Good!" and in the midst of it the sporadic hog and the two refined young men got off the train.