I felt my legs going from under me. Could this be true? Must I now go back there and try to face six or seven? Stumblingly I followed Myra, and at the door stopped and looked in. It was full of pretty girls, my partner of the moment before now chattering lightly among them. “I’m gone,” I thought. “It’s all off. Now for the grand collapse and silence! Which way shall I turn? To whom?”
“There’s room for one more here,” said a Juney blonde, making a place for me.
I could not refuse this challenge. “I’m the one,” I said weakly, and sank heavily beside her. She looked at me encouragingly, as did the others, and at a vast expense of energy and will power I managed to achieve a smile. It was pathetic.
“Isn’t train-riding just glorious?” exclaimed one of these bright-faced imps exuberantly. “I bet I haven’t been on a train twice before in all my life, and just look at me! I do it all right, don’t I? I’d just love to travel. I wish I could travel all the time.”
“Oh, don’t you, though!” echoed the girl who was sitting beside me and whom up to now I had scarcely noticed. “Do you think she looks so nice riding?”
I cannot recall what I answered. It may have been witty—if so it was an accident.
“What do you call the proper surroundings?” put in a new voice in answer to something that was said, which same drew my attention to limpid blue eyes, a Cupid’s bow mouth and a wealth of corn-colored hair.
“These,” I finally achieved gallantly, gazing about the compartment and at my companions. A burst of applause followed. I was coming to. Yet I was still bewildered by the bouquet of faces about me. Already the idea of the dreary school-teachers had been dissipated: these were prize-winners. Look where I would I seemed to see a new type of prettiness confronting me. It was like being in the toils of those nymphs in the Ring of the Nibelungen, yet I had no desire to escape, wishing to stay now and see how I could “make out” as a Lothario. Indeed at this I worked hard. I did my best to gaze gayly and captivatingly into pretty eyes of various colors. They all gazed amusedly back. I was almost the only man; they were out for a lark. What would you?
“If I had my wishes now I’d wish for just one thing,” I volunteered, expecting to arouse curiosity.
“Which one?” asked the girl with the brown eyes and piquant little face who wished to travel forever. Her look was significant.