The other put up an objecting hand.
“I hope you’ll excuse me, suh,” he said, “but I don’t believe in keeping those old sores open. I thought sectionalism was dying out everywhere—I hoped it was, anyway. My father fought the Federals for four years and he died reconciled. I don’t know why we younger men [389] shouldn’t be. After all, we’re all Americans now.”
“I wasn’t speaking of the Federal Army,” explained Mr. Birdseye, desperately upset. “I was speaking of the Federal League.”
“Oh, the Federal League!” said the other. “I beg your pardon, suh. Are you—are you interested in baseball?” He put the question wonderingly.
“Am I interested in—well, say, ain’t you interested?”
“Me? Oh, no, suh. I make it a rule never to discuss the subject. You see, I’m a divinity student. I reckon you must’ve mistaken me for somebody else. I was afraid so when you first spoke. I’m mighty sorry.”
“Yes, I must’ve,” agreed Mr. Birdseye. He got upon his own feet and stumbled over the young man’s feet and ran a hand through the hair on his pestered head. “I guess I must’ve got in the wrong car.”
“That’s probably it,” said the pale-haired one. His odd-coloured but ingenuous countenance expressed solicitude and sympathy for the stranger’s disappointment. Indeed, it wrinkled and twitched almost as though this tender-hearted person meant to shed tears. As if to hide his emotions, he suddenly reached for his discarded newspaper and in its opened pages buried his face to the ears—ears which slowly turned from pink to red. When next he spoke it was from behind the shelter of his newsprint shield, [390] and his voice seemed choked. “Undoubtedly that’s it—you got in the wrong car. Well, good-bye, my brother—and God bless and speed you.”
At this precise moment, with the train just beginning to pull out from Barstow Junction, with the light-haired man sinking deeper and deeper inside the opened sheets, and with Mr. Birdseye teetering on uncertain legs in the aisle, there came to the latter’s ears what he might have heard before had his hearing been attuned for sounds from that quarter. He heard a great rollicking, whooping, vehement outburst coming from the next car back, which was likewise the last car. It had youth in it, that sound did—the spirit of unbridled, exuberant youth at play, and abandon and deviltry and prankishness and carefreedom. Mr. Birdseye faced about. He caught up his handbag and, swift as a courier bearing glad tidings, he sped on winged feet—at least those extensive soles almost approximated wings—through the cramped passage flanking the smoking compartment. Where the two cars clankingly joined beneath a metal flange he came into collision with a train butcher just emerging from the rear sleeper.
Butch’s hair was dishevelled and his collar awry. He dangled an emptied fruit basket in one hand and clinked coins together in the palm of the other. On his face was a grin of comic dismay and begrudged admiration.