Disappeared is the right word. Without warning, the train began to move. It gathered speed and clattered away southward. We never saw "Tweeds" or the French girl again. In the thinnest of négligés she was left stranded upon the wayside station, to which no other train would come for at least twelve hours, and possibly not for twenty-four.
The day broke, and we pounded along through a dusty arid country. There was green in the bottom of the valley, but from the roads rose high columns of dust, while the plastered villages of box-like houses near the railroad were dried up and dust-coated. Dust blew in through the carriage windows and settled thick upon the curls which, still swinging and bobbing from the netting of the rack, were fast leaving their mistress behind. At first her companions had been anxious; now they were laughing.
"But," they said, "we wonder if she knows where to come for her things when she does arrive?"
The train became more crowded. Soon people were running up and down, looking angrily for places. Third-class passengers began to fill the corridor of our second-class carriage. A boy of about nineteen, with the half-angry intense face characteristic of some Latins, came into the carriage and demanded a seat from the dark girl who was still stretched at full length. This seat "Darkey," with her habitual selfishness, refused to give up. Suddenly, we were in the middle of a full-fledged Spanish row.
To us it had a comic side. It was not what we would have called a row, as much as a furious debate. Of course with our slight acquaintance with Spanish we missed the finer points of the varied arguments.
"Darkey" began by saying that she was keeping the seat for a friend who was somewhere else. This was to some extent true; the French girl was somewhere else, though there was little likelihood of her claiming the seat.
The boy retorted that if she was somewhere else she probably had another seat.
This argument went to and fro, increasing in acerbity. Each of the quarrellers listened in silence to what the other had to say, making no attempt to interrupt, though the voices grew hoarse with anger.
Presently "Darkey" was telling the boy that he was a wretched third-class passenger anyhow, and that he had no right in a second-class carriage, and even if the seat were free he wasn't going to have it.