“Well, it’s independent, anyhow,” continued the station-master, “and I’ve nothing to do with it.”
“Haven’t the cursed fools who own it the sense to make it connect with anything on the main line?”
“Of course, we’re all fools unless we come from Chicago,” said the station-master imperturbably.
“I didn’t say that,” commented the stranger.
“No, I did. If your dome of thought was in working order, I shouldn’t need to explain these things; but as I’ve nothing particular to do, I may as well teach a man from Chicago his ABC. You stepped off the express just now owning the whole country, populated with fools, according to you. I’ve been station-master here for eighteen months, and I never saw that express stop before. I may be an idiot, but still I am aware that a man who steps off the Greased Lightning is one of two things. He is either a bigbug with pull enough on the railway company to get them to stop the Greased Lightning for him, or else he’s a tramp who can’t pay his fare, and so is put off.”
“Oh, you’ve sized me up, have you? Well, which am I? The millionaire or the tramp?”
“When you stepped off, I thought you were the millionaire; but the moment you opened your mouth, I knew you were the tramp.”
John Steele laughed with very good-natured heartiness.
“Say, old man, that’s all right. The drinks are on me, if there were a tavern near, which there doesn’t seem to be. I suppose there’s no place in this God-forsaken hole where on a hot day like this a man can get a cooling beverage?”
“Stranger, you’re continually jumping at conclusions and landing at the wrong spot. Allow me to tell you”—here he lowered his voice a bit—“that you don’t raise no blush to my cheeks by anything you can say; but there’s a lady in the waiting-room, and if I were you I’d talk accordingly.”