"Stop!" I cried. "Forget it! What do you want to stop for?"
"I don't—it's you. I'm going to rest here quietly while you tell me."
"Young man," I said, fixing him with a cold eye, "this is no time to be funny."
"I entirely agree with you. Therefore as we're of the same mind it behooves you to get busy and give me the information I want."
The coolness of him would have riled a hen. It did me; I gave a stamp on the footboard and angrily said:
"Start up this machine. I was ordered to go to New York and I've got to get there."
"You will as soon as you tell me. But I won't move until you do. We'll stay here all day, all night if necessary. There's just one thing certain: we'll stay till I hear what I want to know."
I was beaten and it made me mad straight through. I was helpless too and that made me madder. If I'd had the least notion of how you started the dinged machine I was angry enough to have tried to do it, though it wouldn't have been any use with Ferguson there to frustrate me.
"You're losing time," said he. "There'll be trouble if you don't show up."
"Do you think it's a high class thing," I snapped out, "to put a girl in a position like this?"