The bewhiskered man said, "Well, I'll be gosh-durned!"
The sample-case man said, "—— —— —— —— ——" (You can fill that up at your leisure.)
The woman in the brown silk rose to her feet, gathered her skirts carefully in her hand, skewered the conductor with her eye, and said: "You've gone and sp'ilt my day, that's what you've gone and done;" and, receiving no reply, crossed the aisle and plumped herself down in the overturned seat opposite the dear old lady, adding, as she shook out her skirt:
"Dirt mean, ain't it?"
The Dear Old Lady looked at the Woman in Brown, nodded in kindly assent, gazed at the conductor over her spectacles until he had closed the door, and said in a low, sweet voice that was addressed to nobody in particular, and yet which permeated the car like a strain of music:
"Well, if we're going to be here for six hours I guess I'll knit."
Just here I began to be interested. The philosophy of the dear woman's life had evidently made her proof against such trivialities. Six hours! What difference did it make? There was a flavor of the Mañana por la mañana of the Spaniard and the Dolce far niente of the Italian in her acceptance of the situation that appealed to me. Another sun would rise on the morrow as beautiful as the one we had to-day; why worry over its setting? Let us eat, drink, and be merry—or knit. It was all the same to her.
I immediately wanted to know more of this passenger—a desire that did not in the slightest degree extend to any other inmate of the car. And yet there were restrictions and barriers which I could not pass. Not occupying the seat beside her or opposite her, but the one behind her, I, of course, was not on terms of such intimacy as would make it possible for me to presume upon her privacy. She was occupying her own house, as it were, framed in between two seat-backs turned to face each other, giving her the use of four seats—one of which had been usurped by the Woman in Brown. I had my one seat with my bag beside me, giving me the privileges of two sittings. Between us, of course, was the back of her own seat, over which I looked and studied her back hair and bonnet and shawl and—knitting.
Under the circumstances I could no more intrude upon the Dear Old Lady's privacy than upon a neighbor's who lived next door to me but whom I did not know and was separated from me only by an eight-inch brick wall. The conventionalities of life enforce these conditions. When, therefore, the Dear Old Lady informed me and the car that she would "knit," I got myself into position to watch the operation; not obtrusively, not with any intention of prying into her private life, but just because—well, just because I couldn't help it.
There was something about her, somehow, that I could not resist. I knew a Dear Old Lady once. She wasn't so stout as this old lady and her eyes were not brown, but blue, and her hair smooth as gray satin and of the same color. I can see her now as I write, the lamplight falling on her ivory needles and tangle of white yarn—and sometimes, even now, I think I hear her voice.