“Well, it is,” said the conductor scornfully, “if you work every day in the week. But I can't stand it more than six days out o' seven; and if you miss a day, or if you miss a trip, they dock you. No, sir. It's about the meanest business I ever struck. If I wa'n't a married man, 'n' if I didn't like to be regular about my meals and get 'em at home 'th my wife, I wouldn't stand it a minute. But that's where it is. It's regular.”
A lady from within signalled the conductor. He stopped the car, and the lady, who had risen with her escort, remained chatting with a friend before she got out. The conductor snapped his bell for starting, with a look of patient sarcasm. “See that?” he asked Lemuel. “Some these women act as if the cars was their private carriage; and you got to act so too, or the lady complains of you, and the company bounces you in a minute. Stock's owned along the line, and they think they own you too. You can't get 'em to set more than ten on a side; they'll leave the car first. I'd like to catch 'em on some the South End or Cambridge cars. I'd show 'em how to pack live stock once, anyway. Yes, sir, these ladies that ride on this line think they can keep the car standin' while they talk about the opera. But you'd ought to see how they all look if a poor woman tries their little game. Oh, I tell you, rich people are hard.”
Lemuel reflected upon the generalisation. He regarded Miss Vane as a rich person; but though she had blamed him unjustly, and had used him impatiently, even cruelly, in this last affair, he remembered other things, and he said—
“Well, I don't know as I should say all of them were hard.”
“Well, may be not,” admitted the conductor. “But I don't envy 'em. The way I look at it, and the way I tell my wife, I wouldn't want their money 'f I had to have the rest of it. Ain't any of 'em happy. I saw that when I lived out. No, sir; what me and my wife want to do is to find us a nice little place in the country.”
At the words a vision of Willoughby Pastures rose upon Lemuel, and a lump of home-sickness came into his throat. He saw the old wood-coloured house, crouching black within its walls under the cold November stars. If his mother had not gone to bed yet, she was sitting beside the cooking-stove in the kitchen, and perhaps his sister was brewing something on it, potion or lotion, for her husband's rheumatism. Miss Vane had talked to him about his mother; she had said he might have her down to visit him, if everything went on right; but of course he knew that Miss Vane did not understand that his mother wore bloomers, and he made up his mind that her invitation was never to be accepted. At the same time he had determined to ask Miss Vane to let him go up and see his mother some Sunday.
“'S fur's we go,” said the conductor. “'F you're goin' on, you want to take another car here.”
“I guess I'll go back with you a little ways,” said Lemuel. “I want to ask you—”
“Guess we'll have to take a back seat, then,” said the conductor, leading the way through the car to the other platform; “or a standee,” he added, snapping the bell. “What is it you want to ask?”
“Oh, nothing. How do you fellows learn to be conductors? How long does it take you?”