AN INTERRUPTED NIGHT
[CHAPTER I]
THE train had limped along all the afternoon with engine trouble, and now at evening the passengers learned that they were two hours behind schedule and still losing time.
Mrs. Dunlap put away her writing materials and sat up with a sigh to look about her. It began to look as if she might be going to miss her connections unless relief from this state of things came soon.
She had just finished correcting the last galley of her new book which was to come out that fall; she had gone over the notes for her new addresses she was on her way to make at several appointed places; she had finished reading her magazine from cover to cover; she had even written a couple of letters to friends; and here she was with time on her hands! An almost unheard of thing for this busy woman. Not many hours of leisure came her way, and when one did, it filled her almost with dismay at the enforced waste of time.
Off in the west a thread of crimson still lingered on the horizon, but it soon faded into a line of pale amber and then disappeared. The lights of the train blared out and shut the travelers into the narrow confines of the car, and Mary Dunlap leaned back in her seat and fell to studying her fellow passengers.
The usual mother with many children who had been the usual noisy nuisance all the afternoon, had subsided into quiet for the time being; the mother and the littlest baby being asleep, the rest occupied with a picture book some thoughtful traveler had donated.
The personnel of the car had changed somewhat during the afternoon. Several people had got out at the stations along the way and others had come in. Among the latter were the two people who occupied the seat directly in front of Mary Dunlap, and before she realized it, she was thoroughly absorbed in studying them, her interest caught by the singularly pure and lovely outline of the young woman's face, in profile.
They were apparently a young married couple, though the man was not so young as the girl, who looked entirely too young to be married yet. As she studied them she could not help wondering over the girl's choice of a husband. They did not seem at all well mated. The girl was the far more attractive of the two.