Ashton contributed a maroon atrocity in hosiery, with equal tact:
"If they fit you, keep 'em. I got stung on that batch of socks. That pair was originally lavender, but they washed like that. Keep 'em. I wouldn't be found dead in 'em."
The mysterious Fosdick, who lived a lonely life in the Observation car and slept in the other sleeper, lent Mallory a pair of pyjamas evidently intended for a bridegroom of romantic disposition. Mallory blushed as he accepted them and when he found himself in them, he whisked out the light, he was so ashamed of himself.
Once more the whole car gaped at the unheard of behavior of its newly wedded pair. The poor porter had been hungry for a bridal couple, but as he went about gathering up the cast-off footwear of his large family and found Mallory's big shoes at number three and Marjorie's tiny boots at number five, he shook his head and groaned.
"Times has suttainly changed for the wuss if this is a bridal couple, gimme divorcees."
CHAPTER XXI
MATRIMONY TO AND FRO
And the next morning they were in Wyoming—well toward the center of that State. They had left behind the tame levels and the truly rural towns and they were among foothills and mountains, passing cities of wildly picturesque repute, like Cheyenne, and Laramie, Bowie, and Medicine Bow, and Bitter Creek, whose very names imply literature and war whoops, cow-boy yelps, barking revolvers, another redskin biting the dust, cattle stampedes, town-paintings, humorous lynchings and bronchos in epileptic frenzy.
But the talk of this train was concerned with none of these wonders, which the novelists and the magazinist have perhaps a trifle overpublished. The talk of this train was concerned with the eighth wonder of the world, a semi-detached bridal couple.
Mrs. Whitcomb was eager enough to voice the sentiment of the whole populace, when she looked up from her novel in the observation room and, nudging Mrs. Temple, drawled: "By the way, my dear, has that bridal couple made up its second night's quarrel yet?"
"The Mallorys?" Mrs. Temple flushed as she answered, mercifully. "Oh, yes, they were very friendly again this morning."