"I heard everybody kissing everybody, but I was cruelly neglected."
Ashton's eyes widened with unbelief, he heard a snicker at his elbow, and whirled to find the porter rubbing his black velvet cheek and writhing with pent-up laughter.
Mrs. Wellington glanced the same way, and a shriek of understanding burst from her. It sent the porter into a spasm of yah-yahs till he caught Ashton's eyes and saw murder in them. The porter fled to the platform and held the door fast, expecting to be lynched.
But Ashton dashed away in search of concealment and soap.
The porter remained on the platform for some time, planning to leap overboard and take his chances rather than fall into Ashton's hands, but at length, finding himself unpursued, he peered into the car and, seeing that Ashton had gone, he returned to his duties. He kept a close watch on Ashton, but on soberer thoughts Ashton had decided that the incident would best be consigned to silence and oblivion. But for all the rest of that day he kept rubbing his lips with his handkerchief.
The porter, noting that the train had swept into a granite gorge like an enormously magnified aisle in a made-up sleeping car, recognized the presence of Echo Canyon, and with it the entrance into Utah. He hastened to impart the tidings to Mr. Fosdick and held out his hand as he extended the information.
Fosdick could hardly believe that his twelve-hundred-mile exile was over.
"We're in Utah?" he exclaimed.
"Yassah," and the porter shoved his palm into view. Fosdick filled it with all his loose change, then whirled to his wife and cried:
"Edith! We are in Utah now! Embrace me!"