Man-woman relationships -- Fiction; Pacifism -- Fiction; World War, 1914-1918 -- United States -- Fiction
“Lord Heavens,” the young timekeeper said, “how do I know where you’re
goin’?”
Still grasping him with one hand, the Inger opened the other and shook
Lory’s paper in the man’s face.
“That’s where,” he said. “Now do you know?”
The man looked right and left and took the paper, on which the Inger’s
fingers did not loosen.
“Well, get on an Indiana Avenue car and transfer,” he said. “Anybody
could tell you that.”
“Where?” yelled the Inger. “Where is that car?”
A crowd was gathering, and the clerk inclined to jest by way of
discounting that disconcerting clutch on his shoulder.
“Depends on which one you catch—” he was beginning, but the Inger,
with his one hand, shook him deliberately and mightily:
“Where?” he said. “And none of your lip about north or south! Point
your finger. _Where?_”
It was at that minute that the young timekeeper caught sight of
Lory. She had pressed forward, and she stood with the Inger’s pack
on the ground at her feet, and her own on her shoulder. She was, of
course, still hatless, but she had knotted upon her head a scarlet
handkerchief; and in that dull air, her hair and face, under their cap
of color, bloomed exquisitely. The man, having stared at her for a
moment, and at that strange luggage of theirs, took out his watch:
“Come along,” he said curtly. “I’ll put you on your car.”
The Inger searched his face. “No tricks?” he demanded. Then, swiftly,
he released his hold. “Obliged to ye,” he said, and picked up his pack
and followed.
They slipped on the black stones, breasted the mass waiting to board
the same car, and somehow found a foothold. Already there was no seat.
The patient crowd herded in the aisles. Elated with the success of
his method, the Inger looked round at the seated men, screened by
newspapers, then reached out to the nearest one, slipped his hand in
his collar, and jerked him to his feet.
The man whirled on him in amazement and then in a wrath which reddened
his face to fever. But for a breath he hesitated before the sheer bulk
of the Inger.
“You’ll be locked up by dark,” he said only, “_I_ don’t need to get
you.”
He treated himself to a deliberate, luxurious look at Lory, leaned
negligently against the shoulder of the man seated nearest, and went
back to his newspaper.
It seemed incredible that one should ride for an hour on a street car
to get anywhere. At the end of ten minutes the Inger had gone back to
the platform and:
“Say,” he said. “We wasn’t goin’ in the country, you know.”
The conductor went on counting transfers.
“Say—” the Inger went on, slightly louder, and the man glanced up
imperturbably.
“I says I’d leave you off, didn’t I?” he demanded. “It’s ten mile yet.”
Ten miles! The Inger stood by Lory and looked at the streets. Amazing
piles of dirty masonry, highways of dirty stone, processions of carts,
armies of people.
“He lied,” he thought. “They couldn’t keep it up for ten miles.”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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