"I've got to," the conductor abjectly insisted.
Marjorie blazed with fury and the siren became a Scylla. "Then I'll see that my father gets you discharged. If you dare to speak to me again, I'll order my husband to throw you off this train. To think of being refused a simple little favor by a mere conductor! of a stupid old emigrant train!! of all things!!!"
Then she hurled herself into a chair and pounded her heels on the floor in a tantrum that paralyzed Mallory. Even the conductor tapped him on the shoulder and said: "You have my sympathy."
CHAPTER XXVII
THE DOG-ON DOG AGAIN
As the conductor left the Mallorys to their own devices, it rushed over him anew what sacrilege had been attempted—a fool bride had asked him to stop the Trans-American of all trains!—to go shopping of all things!
He stormed into the smoking room to open the safety valve of his wrath, and found the porter just coming out of the buffet cell with a tray, two hollow-stemmed glasses and a bottle swaddled in a napkin.
"Say, Ellsworth, what in —— do you suppose that female back there wants?—wants me to hold the Trans-American while——"
But the porter was in a flurry himself. He was about to serve champagne, and he cut the conductor short:
"'Scuse me, boss, but they's a lovin' couple in the stateroom forward that is in a powerful hurry for this. I can't talk to you now. I'll see you later." And he swaggered off, leaving the door of the buffet open. The conductor paused to close it, glanced in, started, stared, glared, roared: "What's this! Well, I'll be—a dog smuggled in here! I'll break that coon's head. Come out of there, you miserable or'nary hound." He seized the incredulous Snoozleums by the scruff of his neck, growling, "It's you for the baggage car ahead," and dashed out with his prey, just as Mallory, now getting new bearings on Marjorie's character, spoke across the rampart of his Napoleonically folded arms:
"Well, you're a nice one!—making violent love to a conductor before my very eyes. A minute more and I would have——"