“There, madam, I did get you here in time, though I almost broke my neck to do it; that last ice you took came near being our ruin.”
“Ice, indeed! Better say that last glass you took,” the lady retorted, with a loud, boisterous laugh, which made Everard shiver from head to foot, for he recognized Josephine’s voice, and knew it was his wife who took the unoccupied seat in front of him, gasping and panting as if wholly out of breath.
“Almost dead,” she declared herself to be, whereupon her companion, who was Dr. Matthewson, fanned her furiously with his hat, laughing and jesting, and attracting the attention of everybody in the car.
For an instant Everard half rose to his feet, with an impulse to make himself known, but something held him back, and resuming his reclining attitude, with his hat over his eyes in such a manner that he could see without being himself seen, he prepared to watch the unsuspecting couple in front of him, and their flirtation, for it seemed to be that in sober earnest.
Josey was all life and fun, and could scarcely keep still a moment, but turned, and twisted, and tossed her head, and coquetted with the doctor, who, with his arm on the seat behind her, and half encircling her, bent over her, and looked into her beaming face in the most lover-like manner.
Just then the door at the other end of the car opened, and the conductor appeared with his lantern and demand for tickets.
“I shall have to pay extra,” Matthewson said. “You ate so long that I did not have time to get my tickets.”
“Nonsense,” Josey answered, in a voice she evidently did not mean to have heard, but which nevertheless reached Everard’s ear, opened wide to receive it, “Nonsense! This one,” nodding towards the conductor, “never charges me anything; we have lots of fun together. I’ll pass you; put up your money and see how I’ll manage it.”
And when the conductor reached their seat and stopped before it and threw the light of his lantern in Josey’s face, he bowed very blandly, but glanced suspiciously at her companion, who was making a feint of getting out his purse.
“My brother,” Josey said, with a mischievous twinkle in her blue eyes; and with an expressive “all right,” the conductor passed on and took the ticket held up to him by the man whose face he could not see, and at whom Josephine now for the first time glanced.