"God bless my soul, old top, don't you think of thanking me. I ought
to thank you. You see, the idiot who makes my shirts, made that by
mistake, and I'd be no end grateful if you'd jolly well take the
loathsome thing off my hands. I mean to say, I shouldn't dream of
being seen in it myself. You quite understand, don't you?"
Ashton contributed a maroon atrocity in hosiery, with equal tact:
"If they fit you, keep 'em. I got stung on that batch of socks. That
pair was originally lavender, but they washed like that. Keep 'em. I
wouldn't be found dead in 'em."
The mysterious Fosdick, who lived a lonely life in the Observation car
and slept in the other sleeper, lent Mallory a pair of pyjamas
evidently intended for a bridegroom of romantic disposition. Mallory
blushed as he accepted them and when he found himself in them, he
whisked out the light, he was so ashamed of himself.
Once more the whole car gaped at the unheard of behavior of its newly
wedded pair. The poor porter had been hungry for a bridal couple, but
as he went about gathering up the cast-off footwear of his large
family and found Mallory's big shoes at number three and Marjorie's
tiny boots at number five, he shook his head and groaned.
"Times has suttainly changed for the wuss if this is a bridal couple,
gimme divorcees."
CHAPTER XXI
MATRIMONY TO AND FRO
And the next morning they were in Wyoming--well toward the center of
that State. They had left behind the tame levels and the truly rural
towns and they were among foothills and mountains, passing cities of
wildly picturesque repute, like Cheyenne, and Laramie, Bowie, and
Medicine Bow, and Bitter Creek, whose very names imply literature and
war whoops, cow-boy yelps, barking revolvers, another redskin biting
the dust, cattle stampedes, town-paintings, humorous lynchings and
bronchos in epileptic frenzy.
But the talk of this train was concerned with none of these wonders,
which the novelists and the magazinist have perhaps a trifle
overpublished. The talk of this train was concerned with the eighth
wonder of the world, a semi-detached bridal couple.
Mrs. Whitcomb was eager enough to voice the sentiment of the whole
populace, when she looked up from her novel in the observation room
and, nudging Mrs. Temple, drawled: "By the way, my dear, has that
bridal couple made up its second night's quarrel yet?"
"The Mallorys?" Mrs. Temple flushed as she answered, mercifully. "Oh,
yes, they were very friendly again this morning."
Mrs. Whitcomb's countenance was cynical: "My dear, I've been married
twice and I ought to know something about honeymoons, but this
honeyless honeymoon----" she cast up her eyes and her hands in
despair.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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