"Go right back to your berth, and sleep it off," he advised.
He stood still, collectedly resolute, clothed with authority, and the Englishman hesitated. He had doubtless pluck enough, and his blood was up, but he had also the innate, ingrained capacity for obedience to duly constituted power, which is not as a rule a characteristic of the Westerner. Then the conductor spoke again:
"Get a move on! I'll dump you off into the bush if you try to make trouble here."
It proved sufficient. The singer let the captive foot go and turned away; and when the conductor left, peace had settled down upon the clattering car. The little incident had, however, an unpleasant effect on Alison, for this was not the kind of thing to which she had been accustomed. It was a moment or two before she turned to her companion.
"I shall be very glad to get off the train to-morrow, Milly—and I suppose you will be quite as pleased," she said.
The girl blushed. She was young and pretty in a homely fashion, and had informed Alison, who had made her acquaintance on the steamer, that she was to be married to a young Englishman on her arrival at Winnipeg.
"Yes," she replied; "Jim will be there waiting; I got a telegram at Montreal. It's four years since I've seen him."
The words were simple, but there was something in the speaker's voice and eyes which stirred Alison to half-conscious envy. It was not that marriage in the abstract had any attraction for her, for the thought of it rather jarred on her temperament, and it was, perhaps, not altogether astonishing that she had of late been brought into contact chiefly with the seamy side of the masculine character. Still, lonely and cast adrift as she was, she envied this girl who had somebody to take her troubles upon his shoulders and shelter her, and she was faintly stirred by her evident tenderness for the man.
"Four years!" she said reflectively. "It's a very long time."
"Oh," declared Milly, "it wouldn't matter if it had been a dozen now. He's the same—only a little handsomer in his last picture. Except for that, he hasn't changed a bit—I read you some of his letters on the steamer."