“No matter how it turns out, Dick. My boy loves her, so—I love her too.”
“Tell Dad,” choked Barnes, “I haven’t time to see him.”
Barnes boarded the train with all the excitement of a boy making his first journey. He took a seat in the smoking-car, filled his pipe, and adjusting his knees comfortably against the wooden card-table before him, settled down to deep reflection. A man with an obtrusive arrangement of a large dress-suit case and much rattling of newspapers took the seat facing him. He would meet her, Barnes dreamed, in the sitting-room. She would wear her China silk with the polka dots in it. It would be at about sunset time, so that the gold in her hair would be more than ever in evidence as it always was when the sun took it slantwise. The ivory forehead would be flushed with the lightest crimson; her lips would be like damson preserves; and she would hold herself like a Venetian noblewoman.
His thoughts were interrupted by the voice of the stranger.
“The lies which are circulated about Alaska,” declared the latter with spirit, “would fill a book.”
Barnes glanced up at the man with some interest. He saw a young fellow with a decent if somewhat brazen face. His wide felt hat was set at a rakish angle and his clothes were a trifle over emphasized. The fellow was evidently referring to something he had read in the New York paper which he held in his big hand.
“They ought to jail men who slander a country like that,” he further declared.
“What’s the trouble?” inquired Barnes.
“Trouble? Why, the man who wrote this couldn’t have been within a thousand miles of Alaska. The stuff is libel—nothing else. You’d think from this that the place was up near the North Pole somewhere; you’d think all we had to eat was icicles; you’d think we lived in huts and wore a couple of feet of fur the year round. You’d think we were all a gang of wild Indians who wouldn’t know a street car by sight.”
“Well,” observed Barnes, straightening up, “I suppose you do lack many of the modern conveniences.”