"Oh, cut it out, Mame!" answered Liz. "Now, George, you stop!" This with a scream at one of the drummers, whose head had been thrust close to Mame's ear in an attempt to listen.
"Say, girls," broke in another—they were all talking at once—"why, them fellers in the front seat went on awful! I seen Sanders lookin' and—"
"Well, what if he did look? That guy ain't—" etc., etc.
I began to realize now why the other passengers were packed together in the far end of the car. I broke camp and moved down their way.
The train sped on. I busied myself studying the loops and curls of snow that the eddying wind was piling up in the cuts and opens, as they lay glistening under the glow of the lights streaming through the car windows; noting, too, here and there, a fence post standing alone where some curious wind-fluke had scooped clear the drifts.
Soon I began to speculate on the outcome of the trip. I had at best only three hours leeway between 11.30 A.M., the schedule time of arriving in Cleveland, and 2.30 P.M., the hour of my lecture—not much in a storm like this, with every train delayed and the outlook worse every hour.
At Albion the drummers got out, the girls waving their hands at them through the frosted windows. When the jolly party of coryphées regained their seats, their regulation smiles, much to my surprise, had faded. Five minutes later, when I craned my neck to look at them, wondering why their boisterousness had ceased, the three had wrapped themselves up in their night cloaks and were fast asleep. The drummers, no doubt, forgot them as quickly.
The conductor now came along and shook a sleepy man on the seat behind me into consciousness. He had a small leather case with him and looked like a doctor—was, probably; picked up above Battle Creek, no doubt, by a hurry call. He had been catching a nap while he could. Jackson was ten minutes away, so the conductor told the man.
More stumbling down the snow-choked steps and plunging through drifts (it was too early yet for the yard shovellers), and I entered the depot at Jackson—my second stop on the way to Cleveland.