As he started to go, Fosdick, who had been incessantly consulting his watch, checked him to ask: "Oh, conductor, when do we get to the State-line of dear old Utah?"
"Dear old Utah!" the conductor grinned. "We'd 'a' been there already if we hadn't 'a' fell behind a little."
"Just my luck to be late," Fosdick moaned.
"What you so anxious to be in Utah for, Fosdick?" Ashton asked, suspiciously. "You go on to 'Frisco, don't you?"
Fosdick was evidently confused at the direct question. He tried to dodge it: "Yes, but—funny how things have changed. When we started, nobody was speaking to anybody except his wife, now——"
"Now," said Ashton, drily, "everybody's speaking to everybody except his wife."
"You're wrong there," Little Jimmie interrupted. "I wasn't speaking to my wife in the first place. We got on as strangersh and we're strangersh yet. Mrs. Well'n'ton is a——"
"A queen among women, we know! Dry up," said Ashton, and then they heard the querulous voice of the porter of their sleeping car: "I tell you, I don't know nothin' about the buffet business."
The conductor pushed him in with a gruff command: "Crawl in that cage and get busy."
Still the porter protested: "Mista Pullman engaged me for a sleepin' car, not a drinkin' car. I'm a berth-maker, not a mixer." He cast a resentful glance through the window that served also as a bar, and his whole tone changed: "Say, is you goin' to allow me loose amongst all them beautiful bottles? Say, man, if you do, I can't guarantee my conduck."