Pen in a daze, gave way. She was saying to herself: "She'll never come. It was a wild scheme. You're only wasting your time..."
Suddenly a high-pitched, metallic voice beside her exclaimed: "Well of all people! How are you?"
Pen jumped as if the last thing in the world she expected was to be addressed. Half a dozen women turned around. Pen seemed to shrivel under their glances. But the other girl carried it off well. She was talking continually. Pen got a flash of hard, bright black eyes and a brilliant tight smile. It disconcerted her. She had expected—well, some sort of a pathetic figure. These eyes expressed an infinite sophistication that seemed to open a gulf between them.
Pen's lapse was but momentary. Out of the tail of her eye she saw a burly figure pushing across the aisle, and the emergency nerved her. With an automatic reflection of the other girl's manner she began to talk back:
"Upon my word! Who would ever have expected to find you here?" Without changing her smile she murmured: "We're watched. He's coming this way."
The other girl's eyes signaled: "I get you!" She said loudly: "How are all the folks?"
"Much the same as usual," said Pen.
The burly one brushed by, his foolish eyes looking everywhere but at them, his mouth pursed up to whistle.
When he had gone by, "Bull," murmured the black-eyed girl out of the corner of her mouth. "Pure-bred Jersey." Aloud she said vivaciously: "You must tell me all about everybody. Let's get out of this jam."
With a hand under Pen's elbow, she steered her out of the press. Crossing the aisle they struck into a side aisle, deserted for the moment. Here the man could not come close enough to overhear their talk without giving himself away completely. They could see him loitering in the main aisle uncertain what to do.