There was nothing in the established usages of railway traveling which should have made a positive crime of this, but there was something in the way the newcomer gazed at the fresh-faced girl opposite him which brought the blood to the face of Val Manning.
“The impudent scamp!” he muttered to Bar. “Why couldn’t he have found another seat?”
“Keep still a bit,” said Bar. “I know what he’s up to, or I’m greatly mistaken.”
If the ladies themselves were disturbed by the presence of the stranger, they were not disposed to make any public exhibition of their disgust.
It is true that the elder seemed to become more interested than before in the scenery through which the train was passing, and the younger took a sudden plunge into a book which had been lying neglected on her lap.
“That’s just what he wants,” said Bar to Val. “Anything to keep their eyes off him. There, that’s it. He’s a good deal clumsier than old Prosper.”
It happened that, a few seats further on, a party of four gentlemen were sitting together in animated conversation, and the outer one of the two who were facing Bar and Val was a man of unusual size, though not of a particularly intellectual appearance.
He had not been paying any attention, that Val had noticed, to the operations of the flashy stranger, but now he suddenly exclaimed, or so it seemed:
“Keep your hand out of her pocket.”
At the same moment he sprang to his feet as if in great astonishment, and so did the unwelcome companion of the two ladies.