The result was that the train went off and left your Uncle Joseph.
Aunt Melinda was much exercised, but the train-hands pacified her by assurances that her husband would follow on the next train, and she should simply wait for him in the depot at Buffalo.
Now the Flyer was right behind the Jerkwater, and Uncle Joe took the Flyer and got to Buffalo first. When the Jerkwater came in, Uncle Joe was on the platform waiting for Aunt Melinda.
As she disembarked he approached her.
She shied and passed on.
He persisted in his attentions.
Then it was that she shook her umbrella at him and bade him hike. The eternally feminine in her nature prompted self-preservation. She banked on her reason—woman’s reason—not her intuition. She had started first—her husband could only come on a later train.
“Go ’way and leave me alone,” she shouted in shrill falsetto. “You have got yourself up to look like my Joe—and that idiotic grin on your homely face is just like my Joe, but no city sharper can fool me, and if you don’t go right along I’ll call for the perlice!”
She called for the police, and Uncle Joe had to show a strawberry-mark to prove his identity, before he received recognition.