When, a little later, my small charges were brought back to their mother (to whom I had explained their absence), it was by the young lady herself, and I never saw a more grateful picture than that young girl, in her fresh travelling costume, convoying those children down the car aisle. Her greeting of the tired mother was a refreshment, and a minute after she had gone the mother offered me a part of a substantial supply of sandwiches which she had brought her, so that I found myself not quite so much in sympathy as before with the criticism of the road that was now being freely bandied about the car, and which appeared to have made all the passengers as one.
Not long after this we dropped the private car at a station and proceeded on without it. We had, however, not gone far when we stopped and were run into a siding and again waited, and after a time, a train whizzed by us—a special train with but two private cars on it. It was going at a clipping rate, but it did not run so fast that we did not recognize the private car we had dropped some way back, and it soon became known throughout our train that we had been side-tracked to let a special with private cars have the right-of-way. I confess that my gorge rose at this, and when the man in front of me declared that we were the most patient people on earth to give public franchises, pay for travelling on trains run by virtue of them, and then stand being shoved aside and inconvenienced out of all reason to allow a lot of bloated dead-heads to go ahead of us in their special trains, I chimed in with him heartily.
"Well, the road belongs to them, don't it?" inquired a thin man with a wheezing voice. "That was Canter's private train, and he took on the Argand car at that station back there."
"'They own the road!' How do they own it? How did they get it?" demanded the first speaker warmly.
"Why, you know how they got it. They got it in the panic—that is, they got the controlling interest."
"Yes, and then ran the stock down till they had got control and then reorganized and cut out those that wouldn't sell—or couldn't—the widows and orphans and infants—that's the way they got it."
"Well, the court upheld it?"
"Yes, under the law they had had made themselves to suit themselves. You know how 'twas! You were there when 'twas done and saw how they flung their money around—or rather the Argand money—for I don't believe Canter and his set own the stock at all. I'll bet a thousand dollars that every share is up as collateral in old Argand's bank."
"Oh! Well, it's all the same thing. They stand in together. They run the bank—the bank lends money; they buy the stock and put it up for the loan, and then run the road."
"And us," chipped in the other; for they had now gotten into a high good-humor with each other—"they get our franchises and our money, and then side-track us without breakfast while they go sailing by—in cars that they call theirs, but which we pay for. I do think we are the biggest fools!"