CHAPTER VIII
A MATTER OF PRONUNCIATION
This is a story of the Mystic Three—Fate, Chance, and Destiny; and what happens to people who trifle with them.
It begins with a young man running after a train. He had to run.
The connection at Westport Junction was normally a close one, but now, even before the incoming train had entirely stopped, the local on the other line began to move out, while the engineers of the two locomotives, leaning from their cab windows, exchanged sooty grins. It was none of their business—this squabble between the two roads which was making the term, "Junction," as applied to Westport, a snare and a derision.
So the roads squabbled, and young Seabury ran. Other passengers ran, too, amid the gibes of newsboys and the patronizing applause of station loafers.
He heard them; he also heard squeaks emitted by females whose highest speed was a dignified and scuttering waddle. Meanwhile he was running, and running hard through the falling snow; the ice under foot did not aid him; his overcoat and suit-case handicapped him; the passengers on the moving train smiled at him behind frosty windows.
One very thin man smoking a cigar rubbed his thumb on the pane in order to see better; he was laughing, and Seabury wished him evil.
There were only two cars, and the last one was already rolling by him. And at one of the windows of this car he saw a pretty girl in chinchilla furs watching him curiously. Then she also smiled.