"You see, I've only just learned she was back from Tahulamaji. I learned about it in town. I may say I learned of it only yesterday!"
"It's queer, isn't it," remarked Barry, with almost a flash of imagination, "we should have happened to come up on the same steamer?"
And then, being just a delightful, sane, normal individual, O'Donnell said what had to be said—what is always said when talk reaches such a point: He said that the world was small.
Louise came back to them with an effort. The train was beginning to draw up out of the swamp region, and on to a plain better adapted to rural uses. The sunshine lay very bright upon the grass. An emotion of hope stirred in her heart. Everything was bound to turn out for the best—her best, she thought. Of course it would! She felt all at once radiantly, boundlessly happy. And she forgot the words in the steam, when his fingers had touched her arm.
The subject of this miraculous meeting of Barry and O'Donnell still animated a conversation which she entered with almost desperate eagerness.
"You weren't acquainted before you met on the boat?"
"Never laid eyes on each other," laughed the Irishman. "We began talking about dry-farming in the gentlemen's lounge, and from that, gradually...."
"The fact is," put in Barry, who wanted to see what little mystery there was cleared up as quickly as possible, "we found we were both on our way to—"
"—to besiege ladies living under the same roof!" concluded the other's readier tongue.