It may have been the frank amusement of a pretty woman, and it may have been the sorrowful apathy of a red-nosed brakeman tying the loose end of the signal rope on the rear platform; doubtless one or the other spurred him to a desperate flying leap which landed him and his suit-case on the rear platform of the last car. And there he stuck, too mad to speak, until a whirlwind of snow and cinders drove him to shelter inside.
The choice of cars was limited to a combination baggage and smoker and a more fragrant passenger coach. He selected a place in the latter across the aisle from the attractive girl in chinchilla furs who had smiled at his misfortunes—not very maliciously. Now, as he seated himself, she glanced up at him without the slightest visible interest, and returned to her study of the winter landscape.
The car was hot; he was hot. Burning thoughts concerning the insolence of railroads made him hotter; the knowledge that he had furnished amusement for the passengers of two trains did not cool him.
Meanwhile everybody in the car had become tired of staring at him; a little boy across the aisle giggled his last giggle; several men resumed their newspapers; a shopgirl remembered her gum and began chewing it again.
A large mottled man with a damp moustache, seated opposite him, said: "Vell, Mister, you runned pooty quvick alretty py dot Vestport train!"
"It seems to me," observed Seabury, touching his heated face with his handkerchief, "that the public ought to do something."
"Yaw; der bublic it runs," said the large man, resuming his eyeglasses and holding his newspaper nearer to the window in the fading light.
Seabury smiled to himself and ventured to glance across the aisle in time to see the dawning smile in the blue eyes of his neighbor die out instantly as he turned. It was the second smile he had extinguished since his appearance aboard the train.
The conductor, a fat, unbuttoned, untidy official, wearing spectacles and a walrus moustache, came straddling down the aisle. He looked over the tops of his spectacles at Seabury doubtfully.
"I managed to jump aboard," explained the young man, smiling.