She hardly glanced at me. It was not flattering. “I have not been robbed, if that is what you mean,” she replied quietly. “I am—perplexed. That is all.”
There was nothing to say to that. I lifted my hat—the other fellow’s hat—and turned to go back to my car. Two or three members of the train crew, including the conductor, were standing in the shadow talking. And at that moment, from a farm-house near came the swift clang of the breakfast bell, calling in the hands from barn and pasture. I turned back to the girl.
“We may be here for an hour,” I said, “and there is no buffet car on. If I remember my youth, that bell means ham and eggs and country butter and coffee. If you care to run the risk—”
“I am not hungry,” she said, “but perhaps a cup of coffee—dear me, I believe I am hungry,” she finished. “Only—” She glanced back of her.
“I can bring your companion,” I suggested, without enthusiasm. But the young woman shook her head.
“She is not hungry,” she objected, “and she is very—well, I know she wouldn’t come. Do you suppose we could make it if we run?”
“I haven’t any idea,” I said cheerfully. “Any old train would be better than this one, if it does leave us behind.”
“Yes. Any train would be better than this one,” she repeated gravely. I found myself watching her changing expression. I had spoken two dozen words to her and already I felt that I knew the lights and shades in her voice,—I, who had always known how a woman rode to hounds, and who never could have told the color of her hair.
I stepped down on the ties and turned to assist her, and together we walked back to where the conductor and the porter from our car were in close conversation. Instinctively my hand went to my cigarette pocket and came out empty. She saw the gesture.
“If you want to smoke, you may,” she said. “I have a big cousin who smokes all the time. He says I am ‘kippered.’”