“Just trot right off about your own affairs, now, all of you; you have treated us shamefully, and,” we sniveled and wept a little at this point, “we don’t even know your names.”
The conductor now interposed: “Madam, you fainted, and but for the kindness of this physician,—”
“Kindness of fiddlesticks!” we interrupted, “we were out of town, off on a voyage,—visiting friends,—and should have returned in good time, if—”
The doctor hastily returned to his post, while the others with horror-stricken faces, as promptly retreated.
Resourceless before their suspicions, we relinquished all intentions to elucidate, and added, simply:
“Who thought we were all right if left alone?”
Whereupon a mild-mannered miss of probably sixteen well-invested summers, turned toward us to say, modestly:
“I’ve seen people that way before; Aunt Sophronia often is; I don’t understand it; but you didn’t look a bit dead.”
“Dead!” we ejaculated; “We’d like to die that way often, every day or two. You must have some common sense.”
Then we straightened up our traveling cap, and stared savagely at the outside panorama of brown fields, while we tried to imagine a life of love, truth, justice, charity;—among idiots.