The depot, as always, held a considerable crowd to greet the one daily train from San Antone. No sooner had Penoch guided his panting monster into parking space, and its wheezes and moans died, than a shiny eight-cylinder speedster appeared in the next stall. A feminine voice was yelling:
“Hello, flyers! Who’s arriving?”
“Reserve officer; friend of mine,” Penoch was forced to say. “How’s my secret sorrow?”
“Fine,” returned Miss Shirley Curran airily, hopping out of her car and into ours. “Well, I suppose I might as well look him over.”
She was nineteen—one of these slightly dizzy, somewhat confusing flappers that senile old men of thirty-odd like myself had a hard time getting used to a few years back. She was slim and thin-faced and good-looking, with boyishly bobbed blond hair, snapping blue eyes, and agile tongue. She was tireless—a slim streak of flame, who could dance all night, ride all day, smoke seven packages of cigarets, and look as fresh as a daisy.
Her dad was a great old Texan, who’d played a lot of poker, drunk a lot of liquor and had been a great ladies’ man in his time. She was the apple of his eye—and a good apple, too. She was a pal to many of the flyers; although, for real playmates, she preferred less mature samples of the male sex—college boys and that sort, who could fling a mean hoof.
She chatted along until the train rattled in and Penoch left the car.
“What’s the matter with him?” she demanded.
“Just moody, I guess; he gets that way.”
“He does not. He’s about as moody as our cow.”