“Oh, not for worlds, Marion! You know he is discharging all the best of the older men, the men that have made the road everything it is, and of course we can’t help sympathizing with them 85 over our way. For my part, I think it is terrible, after a man has given all of his life to building up a railroad, that he should be thrown out to starve in that way by new managers, Marion.”
McCloud felt himself shrinking within his weary clothes. Resentment seemed to have died. He felt too exhausted to undertake controversy, even if it were to be thought of, and it was not.
Nothing further was needed to complete his humiliation. He picked up his hat and with the thought of getting out as quietly as he had come in. In rising he swept a tumbler at his elbow from the table. The glass broke on the floor, and Marion exclaimed, “What is that?” and started for the dining-room.
It was too late to get away. McCloud stepped to the portières of the trimming-room door and pushed them aside. Marion stood with a hat in her hand, and Dicksie, sitting at the table, was looking directly at the intruder as he appeared in the doorway. She saw in him her pleasant acquaintance of the wreck at Smoky Creek, whose name she had not learned. In her surprise she rose to her feet, and Marion spoke quickly: “Oh, Mr. McCloud, is it you? I did not hear you come in.”
Dicksie’s face, which had lighted, became a spectacle of confusion after she heard the name. 86 McCloud, conscious of the awkwardness of his position and the disorder of his garb, said the worst thing at once: “I fear I am inadvertently overhearing your conversation.”
He looked at Dicksie as he spoke, chiefly because he could not help it, and this made matters hopeless.
She flushed more deeply. “I cannot conceive why our conversation should invite a listener.”
Her words did not, of course, help to steady him. “I tried to get away,” he stammered, “when I realized I was a part of it.”
“In any event,” she exclaimed hastily, “if you are Mr. McCloud I think it unpardonable to do anything like that!”
“I am Mr. McCloud, though I should rather be anybody else; and I am sorry that I was unable to help hearing what was said; I–––”