"No, I guess the best way is to try and wash it off. I'll get rid of this anyway," the Dear Old Lady answered; and out came the treacherous jar with the crack extending down its side, its metal top loose, the whole wrapped in yellow paper—all of which she dropped out of the open window.
During this last examination the Woman in Brown stood in the aisle, her skirts above her ankles. It wasn't her bag, or her stockings, or her jam. She had paid her fare and was entitled to her seat and its surrounding comforts: I had a good view of her face as she stood in front of me, and I saw what was passing in her mind. To this air of being imposed upon, first by the railroad and now by this fellow-passenger, was added a certain air of disgust—a contempt for any one, however old, who could be so stupid and careless. The little wrinkles that kept puckering at the base of her red lobster-claw of a nose—it really looked like one—helped me in this diagnosis. Its shape prevented her from turning it up at anybody, and wrinkling was all that was left. Having read her thoughts as reflected in her face, I was no longer surprised that she continued standing without offering in any way to help her companion out of her dilemma.
The Dear Old Lady's examination over, and the intricacies of her bag explored and the corners of certain articles of apparel lifted and immediately replaced again, she said to herself, with a sigh of relief:
"Ain't but one stocking tetched, anyhow. Most of it's gone into my shoes—yes, that's better. Oh, I was so scared!"
"Everything stuck up, ain't it?" rasped the Woman. She hadn't taken her seat yet. It seemed to me she could get more comfort out of the Old Lady's misery standing up.
"Well, it might ha' been worse, but I ain't goin' to worry a mite over it. I'll go to the cooler and wash up what I can, and the rest's got to wait till I get to John's," she said in her sweet, patient way, as she gathered up the bag and its contents and made her way to the wash-basin.
The car relapsed into its former dull condition. Those of the passengers who were not experts and whose advice, if taken, would have immediately replaced the cylinder-head and sent the train in on time, were picking flowers outside the track, but close enough to the train to spring aboard at the first sign of life in the motive-power. Every now and then there would come a back-thrust of the car and a bumping into the one behind us. Some scientist who had spent his life in a country store hereupon explained to a mechanical engineer who had a market garden out of Springfield (I learned this from their conversation) that "it was the b'iler that acted that way; the engineer was lettin' off steam and the jerk come when he raised the safety-valve."
A brakeman now opened the door nearest the water-cooler, passed the old lady washing up, ran amuck through a volley of questions fired at him in rapid succession, and slammed the other door behind him without replying to one of them. In this fusillade the Woman in Brown, who had now turned over a flower-picking passenger's seat in addition to her own, had managed her tongue with the rapidity and precision of a Gatling gun.
One of those mysterious rumors, picked up from some scrap of conversation heard outside, now drifted through the car. It conveyed the information that another engine had been telegraphed for and would be along soon. This possibility the Sample-Case Man demolished by remarking in his peculiar vernacular—unprintable, all of it—that it was ten miles to the nearest telegraph station and it would take two hours to walk it.