"Mattie!" he raved, "and in perfect form." And now the hidden serpent of jealousy, which promised to enliven their future, lifted its head for the first time, and Mallory caught his first glimpse of an unsuspected member of their household. Marjorie demanded with an ominous chill: "And who's Mattie? Some former sweetheart of yours?" "My dear," laughed Mallory. But Marjorie was up and away, with apt temper: "So Mattie was in the box, was she? What is it to you, where she sits? You dare to read about her and rave over her perfect form, while you neglect your wife--or your--oh, what am I, anyway?" Mallory stared at her in amazement. He was beginning to learn what ignorant heathen women are concerning so many of the gods and demi-gods of mankind. Then, with a tenderness he might not always show, he threw the paper down and took her in his arms: "You poor child. Mattie is a man--a pitcher--and you're the only woman I ever loved--and you are liable to be my wife any minute." The explanation was sufficient, and she crawled into the shelter of his arm with little noises that served for apology, forgiveness and reconciliation. Then he made the mistake of mentioning the sickening topic of deferred hope: "A minister's sure to get on at the next stop--or the next." Marjorie's nerves were frayed by too much enduring, and it took only a word to set them jangling: "If you say minister to me again, I'll scream." Then she tried to control herself with a polite: "Where is the next stop?" "Ogden." "Where's that? On the map?" "Well, it's in Utah." "Utah!" she groaned. "They marry by wholesale there, and we can't even get a sample." CHAPTER XXV THE TRAIN WRECKER The train-butcher, entering the Observation Room, found only a loving couple. He took in at a glance their desire for solitude. A large part of his business was the forcing of wares on people who did not want them. His voice and his method suggested the mosquito. Seeing Mallory and Marjorie mutually absorbed in reading each other's eyes, and evidently in need of nothing on earth less than something else to read, the train-butcher decided that his best plan of attack was to make himself a nuisance. It is a plan successfully adopted by organ-grinders, street pianists and other blackmailers under the guise of art, who have nothing so welcome to sell as their absence. Mallory and Marjorie heard the train-boy's hum, but they tried to ignore it. "Papers, gents and ladies? Yes? No? Paris fashions, lady?" He shoved a large periodical between their very noses, but Marjorie threw it on the floor, with a bitter glance at her own borrowed plumage: "Don't show me any Paris fashions!" Then she gave the boy his congé by resuming her chat with Mallory: "How long do we stop at Ogden?" The train-boy went right on auctioning his papers and magazines, and poking them into the laps of his prey. And they went right on talking to one another and pushing his papers and magazines to the floor.