Being masculinely selfish, and a seasoned traveller withal, he was steeling himself to say "No" to this request what time the train was rumbling over the great bridge spanning the Missouri. The bridge passage was leisurely, and there was time for a determined strengthening of the selfish defenses.
But at the Omaha station there was a fresh influx of passengers for the Denver car, and to Ballard's dismay they appeared at the first hasty glance to be all women.
"O good Lord!" he ejaculated; and finding his pipe retreated precipitately in the direction of the smoking-compartment, vaguely hoping to dodge the inevitable.
At the turn around the corner of the linen locker he glanced back. Two or three figures in the group of late comers might have asked for recognition if he had looked fairly at them; but he had eyes for only one: a modish young woman in a veiled hat and a shapeless gray box travelling-coat, who was evidently trying to explain something to the Pullman conductor.
"Jove!" he exclaimed; "if I weren't absolutely certain that Elsa Craigmiles is half-way across the Atlantic with the Lassleys—but she is; and if she were not, she wouldn't be here, doing the 'personally conducted' for that mob." And he went on to smoke.
It was a very short time afterward that an apologetic Pullman conductor found him, and the inevitable came to pass.
"This is Mr. Ballard, I believe?"
A nod, and an uphanding of tickets.
"Thank you. I don't like to discommode you, Mr. Ballard; but—er—you have an entire section, and——"
"I know," said Ballard crisply. "The lady got on the wrong train, or she bought the wrong kind of ticket, or she took chances on finding the good-natured fellow who would give up his berth and go hang himself on a clothes-hook in the vestibule. I have been there before, but I have not yet learned how to say 'No.' Fix it up any way you please, only don't give me an upper over a flat-wheeled truck, if you can help it."