“Must be two months?”
“Ah?” Hawkins had smiled.
“What is it? Life insurance companies on to you?”
“Um-ah,” Hawkins had replied.
“Or have you really given it up for good? It can't be, can it?”
“Oh-ho,” Hawkins had yawned, and there I stopped questioning him.
Satan himself must have concocted the business which sent me—or started me—toward Philadelphia next morning. Perhaps, though, the railroad company was as much to blame; they should have known better.
The man in the moon was no further from my thoughts than Hawkins as I stepped ashore on the Jersey side of the ferry to take the train. Yet there stood Hawkins in the station.
He seemed to be fussing violently as he lingered by the door of one of the offices. Unperceived, I came close enough to hear him murmur thrice in succession something about “blamed nonsense—devilish red-tape.”
Surely something had worked him up. I wondered what it was.