The fellow had evidently been discouraged by her manner—sufficiently, that is, to slightly dampen his enthusiasm.
Yet he still lingered uncomfortably near. Dorothy was annoyed and more than a little alarmed to find that he occupied a seat in the same car with her and Tavia.
On the entire trip then, they would be forced to suffer the annoyance of his presence, to ward off his offensive attentions.
Dorothy could see that he often glanced at her over the top of the paper he pretended to be reading and knew that it needed only a word or a glance from her to bring him instantly to her side.
She wished more than ever that Garry were with her. He would know how to deal with offensive strangers who took advantage of the confusion and excitement consequent upon a train accident to become familiar.
She thought of Tavia, still, presumably, busy fascinating the good-looking stranger. This was always an interesting pastime with Tavia, and it would probably be some time before she tired of it.
If she had the audacity to bring that man into their car—Dorothy gasped for, out of the corner of her eye, she saw that was just what Tavia was doing.
Her color high, she turned and looked steadily out of the window as Tavia and her latest conquest approached. The latter seemed about to take the seat his unpleasant friend had so recently vacated but a glance at Dorothy’s averted profile warned Tavia that, for the time, she had gone far enough.
“Thank you so much!” she said sweetly, sinking into the opposite seat and adroitly placing a box of candy—the gift of her new friend—upon the other half of the seat, so that there was no room left for him. “You are in this car, too, and going through to Chicago? How nice! Ah, yes, thank you,” as the young man handed her a magazine that had fallen to the floor.
The latter lingered, indulging in inanities—or so Dorothy termed them—with Tavia, but evidently interested in Dorothy’s stubbornly averted profile.