Marjorie was awakened from her trance of inanition by the porter's voice. His plantation voice was ordinarily as thick and sweet as his own New Orleans sorghum, but now it had a bitterness that curdled the blood:
"'Scuse me, but how did you-all git that theah dog in this heah cah?"
"Snoozleums is always with me," said Marjorie briskly, as if that settled it, and turned for confirmation to the dog himself, "aren't you, Snoozleums?"
"Well," the porter drawled, trying to be gracious with his great power, "the rules don't 'low no live stock in the sleepin' cars, 'ceptin' humans."
Marjorie rewarded his condescension with a blunt: "Snoozleums is more human than you are."
"I p'sume he is," the porter admitted, "but he can't make up berths. Anyway, the rules says dogs goes with the baggage."
Marjorie swept rules aside with a defiant: "I don't care. I won't be separated from my Snoozleums."
She looked to Mallory for support, but he was too sorely troubled with greater anxieties to be capable of any action.
The porter tried persuasion: "You betta lemme take him, the conducta is wuss'n what I am. He th'owed a couple of dogs out the window trip befo' last."
"The brute!"