But it was not reciprocated. He eyed her scornfully. “And who pays for the ticket?”
“Oh!” Patsy caught her breath; then she sent it bubbling forth in a contagious laugh. “I do—of course. I’ll take a ticket to—just name over the stations, please?”
The conductor growled them forth: “Hampden, Forestview, Hainsville, Dartmouth, Hudson, Arden, Brambleside, Mayberry, Greyfriars—”
“What’s that last—Greyfriars? I’ll take a ticket to Greyfriars.” She said it after the same fashion she might have used in ordering a mutton chop at a restaurant, and handed the conductor a bill.
When he had given her the change and passed on, still disgruntled, Patsy allowed herself what she called a “temporary attack of private prostration.”
“Idiot!” she groaned in self-address. “Ye are the biggest fool in two continents; and the Lord knows what Dan would be thinking of ye if he were topside o’ green earth to hear.” Whereupon she gripped one vagabond glove with the other—in fellow misery; and for the second time that afternoon her eyes closed with sheer exhaustion.
The train rumbled on. Each time it stopped Patsy watched the doorway and the window beside her for sight of her quarry; each time it started again she sighed inwardly with relief, glad of another furlough from a mission which was fast growing appalling. She had long since ceased to be interested in Billy Burgeman as an individual. He had shrunk into an abstract sense of duty, and as such failed to appeal or convince. But as her interest waned, her determination waxed; she would get him and tell him what she had come for, if it took a year and a day and shocked him into complete oblivion.
She was saying this to herself for the hundredth time, adding for spice—and artistic finish—“After that—the devil take him!” when the train pulled away from another station. She had already satisfied herself that he was not among the leaving passengers. But suddenly something familiar in a solitary figure standing at the far end of the gravel embankment caught her eye; it was back toward her, and in the quick passing and the gathering dusk she could make out dim outlines only. But those outlines were unmistakable, unforgetable.
“A million curses on the house of Burgeman!” quoth Patsy. “Well, there’s naught for it but to get off at the next station and go back.”