"Yes, sir; it's a fine little town. Great place for boating, summer or winter. You'll see a hundred ice-boats out on Monona there all at once. I've got a cousin there who has a boat. He'd be glad to take you out if I'd tell him about you."
"I don't want to know him," she said, in what she intended to be a fierce tone, but which was a pitifully scared tone.
The conductor saw the brakeman looking at him and in order to convey the impression that he was getting on nicely he bent forward and looked around into her face.
"O, you'd like him first rate."
Rose would have screamed, or burst out into some wild action had not the engine whistled. This gave the conductor an excuse to give the talk up for the moment.
"She's a daisy and as green as grass," he said to the brakeman. Her innocence seemed to place her in his hand.
For the next hour they persecuted the girl with their low presences. First one and then the other came along the aisle and sat down beside her. And when she put her valise there, blocking the seat, the brakeman sat on the armrest and tormented her with questions to which she gave no answer.
Just after Pine City she heard a cool, firm woman's voice ask: "May I sit with you?"
She looked up and made room for a handsome, middle-aged woman, in a neat traveling dress.
"It's a shame!" she said. "I've just got in, but I saw at once how those men were torturing you. Strange no one in the car could see it and take your part."