“Steak or roast?”
“Make her steak,” bade Laramie, still playing safe.
“That,” informed the waitress, “will take about fifteen minutes. It has to be cooked to order.”
“All right,” said Laramie. “I reckon I can stick it out. You tell the cook he can be cookin’ me a can o’ coffee, at same time.”
He sapiently left his hat upon the stool, as sign, and wandered again, for that poignant urge of unlawful thirst nagged him. Presently the wail of a child penetrated through the echoes of the waiting-rooms; and like a knight errant seeking the source of distress he was tolled on until, quite ignorantly, he had invaded the women’s section. Always was soft toward kids, anyhow.
This was an unhappy, protesting kid, asylumed in the lap of a plump young woman who, brightly if (to eyes other than Laramie’s) somewhat extravagantly appareled, in vain hushed it and rocked it. Gazing down, these he saw; and the woman, gazing up, saw him—a rough red head, breaking his seamed countenance into a quizzical smile.
“That yore kid, ma’am?” asked Laramie.
She answered, rather frightened, and clasping the child more closely:
“My sister’s. Not mine—no!”
A comely young woman, she, with round cheeks and sloe-black appealing eyes. Laramie’s heart fluttered responsively.