"O—h," she shivered. "That?" Back of her lovely blondeness, her youth, her vitality, the delicate fine-boned structure 62 of her face loomed suddenly into the faint, poignant outline of the ultimate skull. "Do—do you think he's a reporter?" she stammered.
"Reporter nothing!" snapped her father. Snatching up the traveling bags he headed quite precipitously for the train. White as a little ghost Daphne pattered after him. Close at her heels followed the blue hound.
"What a stunning looking man!" said someone. "And what an awfully pretty girl!" murmured another. "And what a funny looking dog!" agreed everybody.
"For goodness sake, don't you know who it is?" called the girl at the flower booth to the girl at the news-stand.
"Naw," admitted the girl at the news-stand.
"Oh, pshaw," preened the girl at the flower booth. "Don't you know anything? Why it's Jaffrey Bretton the—the—well, I don't know what he is except that he's richer than—oh, richer than Croesus! And wild? Oh, Gee! Why I knew a chauffeur once that knew a cook that said——"
So Jaffrey Bretton and Daphne and the little blue hound passed from the rabble of the station to the rumble of the train.
The rumble of the train is at least a pleasant sound. And when one's 63 nerves are just a bit over-frazzled with the cantankerous parlance of men it is not a half bad idea for the price of a railroad ticket to yield one's ears for such time as one may to the simpler things that Steel, Wood, and Plush have to say to each other. "Strength!" pulses Steel. "Form!" urges Wood. "Rest!" purrs Plush. "Strength— Form—Rest! Strength—Form—Rest!" On and on and on, just like that, day and night, mile and mile, swirl and sway, with no more effort to one's brittle-nerved, ice-chilled body than lolling in a bath-tub would be, while the great Sunny South like so much hot water comes pouring in, a little deeper, a little hotter, every minute, to lave and soothe Past, Present, and Future alike. God bless Railroad Journeys!
Surely it was at least twenty-four restful hours before the "parlance of men" caught up with Daphne and her father again. This catching up, however, proved itself quite sufficiently unpleasant.
It had been rather an eerie day, an eerie twilight anyway, as railroad twilights are apt to be with a great, smooth-running, 64 brilliantly lighted, ultra-perfected train of ultra-perfected cars slipping deeper and deeper and deeper into the black morass of a wild, swampy, tropical night.