And so Charlton, full of thoughts of his "vocation" and the world's "goal," was slipping into an attachment for a woman to whom both words were Choctaw. Do you wonder at it? If she had had a vocation also, and had talked about goals, they would mutually have repelled each other, like two bodies charged with the same kind of electricity. People with vocations can hardly fall in love with other people with vocations.
But now Metropolisville was coming in sight, and Albert's attention was attracted by the conversation of Mr. Minorkey and the fat gentleman.
"Mr. Plausaby has selected an admirable site," Charlton heard the fat gentleman remark, and as Mr. Plausaby was his own step-father, he began to listen. "Pretty sharp! pretty sharp!" continued the fat gentleman. "I tell you what, Mr. Minorkey, that man Plausaby sees through a millstone with a hole in it. I mean to buy some lots in this place. It'll be the county-seat and a railroad junction, as sure as you're alive. And Plausaby has saved some of his best lots for me."
"Yes, it's a nice town, or will be. I hold a mortgage on the best eighty—the one this way—at three per cent and five after maturity, with a waiver. I liked to have died here one night last summer. I was taken just after supper with a violent—"
"What a beauty of a girl that is," broke in the fat gentleman, "little
Katy Charlton, Plausaby's step-daughter!" And instantly Mr. Albert
Charlton thrust his head out of the coach and shouted "Hello, Katy!" to a
girl of fifteen, who ran to intercept the coach at the hotel steps.
"Hurrah, Katy!" said the young man, as she kissed him impulsively as soon as he had alighted.
"P'int out your baggage, mister," said Jim, interrupting Katy's raptures with a tone that befitted a Superior Being.
In a few moments the coach, having deposited Charlton and the fat gentleman, was starting away for its destination at Perritaut, eight miles farther on, when Charlton, remembering again his companion on the front seat, lifted his hat and bowed, and Miss Minorkey was kind enough to return the bow. Albert tried to analyze her bow as he lay awake in bed that night. Miss Minorkey doubtless slept soundly. She always did.