The porter retired. Miss Gattle took out a bit of more or less useful fancy stitching and set to work like another Dorcas. Her needle had not dived in and emerged many times before she was holding it up as a weapon of defense against a sudden human mountain that threatened to crush her.
A vague round face, huge and red as a rising moon, dawned before her eyes and from it came an uncertain voice:
"Esscuzhe me, mad'm, no 'fensh intended."
The words and the breath that carried them gave the startled spinster an instant proof that her vis-à-vis did not share her Prohibition principles or practices. She regarded the elephant with mouselike terror, and the elephant regarded the mouse with elephantine fright, then he removed himself from her landscape as quickly as he could and lurched along the aisle, calling out merrily to the porter:
"Chauffeur! chauffeur! don't go so fasht 'round these corners."
He collided with a small train-boy singing his nasal lay, but it was the behemoth and not the train-boy that collapsed into a seat, sprawling as helplessly as a mammoth oyster on a table-cloth.
The porter rushed to his aid and hoisted him to his feet with an uneasy sense of impending trouble. He felt as if someone had left a monstrous baby on his doorstep, but all he said was:
"Tickets, please."
There ensued a long search, fat, flabby hands flopping and fumbling from pocket to pocket. Once more the porter was the discoverer.
"I see it. Don't look no mo'. Here it is—up in yo' hatband." He lifted it out and chuckled. "Had it right next his brains and couldn't rememba!" He took up the appropriately huge luggage of the bibulous wanderer and led him to the other end of the aisle.