I had so much to tell him. I knew just how I'd take off every member of the company to amuse him. I had memorized every joke I'd heard since I'd got behind the curtain—not very hard for me; things always had a way of sticking in my mind. I knew the newest songs in town, and the choruses of all the old ones. I could show him the latest tricks with cards—I'd got those at first hand from Professor Haughwout. You know how great Tom is on tricks. I could explain the disappearing woman mystery, and the mirror cabinet. I knew the clog dance that Dewitt and Daniels do. I had pictures of the trained seals, the great elephant act, Mademoiselle Picotte doing her great tight-rope dance, and the Brothers Borodini in their pyramid tumbling.
Yes, it was a whole vaudeville show, with refreshments between the acts, that I was taking up to Tom Dorgan. I don't care much for a lot of that truck—funny, isn't it, how you get to turn up your nose at the things you'd have given a finger for once upon a time? But Tom—oh, I'd got everything pat for him—my big, handsome Tom Dorgan in stripes—with his curls all shaved off—ugh!
I'd got just so far in my thoughts, sitting there in the train, when I gave a shiver. I thought for a minute it was at the idea of my Tom with one of those bare, round convict-heads on him, that look like fat skeleton faces. But it wasn't. It was—
Guess, Mag.
Moriway.
Both of us thought the same thing of each other for the first second that our eyes met. I could see that. He thought I was caught at last. And I thought he'd been sharp once too often.
And, Mag, it would be hard to say which of us would have been happier if it had been the truth. Oh, to meet Moriway, bound sure enough for Sing Sing!
He got up and came over to me, smiling wickedly. He took the seat behind me, and leaning forward, said softly:
"Is Miss Omar engaged to read to some invalid up at Sing Sing? And for how long a term—I should say, engagement?"
I'd got through shivering by then. I was ready for him. I turned and looked at him in that very polite, distant sort o' way Gray uses in her act when the Charity superintendent speaks to her. It's the only decent thing she does; chances are that that's how Lord Gray's mother looks at her.