"Will you wait?" exclaimed Gertrude, impatiently. The very handwriting on the note annoyed her. While unfamiliar, her instinct connected it with one person from whom she was determined to receive no communication. She hesitated as she looked at her carefully written name. She wanted to return the communication unopened; but how could she be sure who had sent it? With the impatience of uncertainty she ripped open the envelope.
The note was neither addressed nor signed.
"I have no right to keep this after you leave; perhaps I had no right to keep it at all. But in returning it to you I surely may thank you for the impulse that made you throw it over me the morning I lay asleep behind the Spider dike."
She tore the package partly open—it was her Newmarket coat. Bundling it up again she walked hastily to her compartment. For some moments she remained within; when she came out the messenger boy, his hat now low over his ears, was sitting in her chair looking at the illustrated paper she had laid down. Gertrude suppressed her astonishment; she felt somehow overawed by the unconventionalities of the West.
"Boy, what are you doing here?"
"You said, wait," answered the boy, taking off his hat and rising.
"Oh, yes. Very well; no matter."
"Ma'am?"
"No matter."
"Does that mean for me to wait?"