Campbell: “_There’s_ a respectable butter-ball over in the corner by
the window there. You’d better go and speak to her. She’s got a
gingham bundle, like a cook’s, in her lap, and she keeps looking about
in a fidgety way, as if she expected somebody. I guess that’s your
woman, Roberts. Better not let her give you the slip. You’ll never
hear the last of it from Agnes if you do. And who’ll get our dinner
to-night?”
Roberts, looking over at the woman in the corner, with growing
conviction; “She does answer to the description.”
Campbell: “Yes, and she looks tired of waiting. If I know anything of
that woman’s character, Roberts, she thinks she’s been trifled with,
and she’s not going to stay to be made a fool of any longer.”
Roberts, getting to his feet: “Do you think so? What makes you think
so? Would you go and speak to her?”
Campbell: “I don’t know. She seems to be looking this way. Perhaps she
thinks she recognizes _you_, as she never saw you before.”
Roberts: “There can’t be any harm in asking her? She does seem to be
looking this way.”
Campbell: “Pretty blackly, too. I guess she’s lost faith in you. It
wouldn’t be any use to speak to her now, Roberts.”
Roberts: “I don’t know. I’m afraid I’d better. I must. How would you
introduce the matter, Willis?”
Campbell: “Oh, I wouldn’t undertake to say! I must leave that entirely
to you.”
Roberts: “Do you think I’d better go at it boldly, and ask her if
she’s the one; or--or--approach it more gradually?”
Campbell: “With a few remarks about the weather, or the last novel, or
a little society gossip? Oh, decidedly.”
Roberts: “Oh, come, now, Willis! What would you advise? You must see
it’s very embarrassing.”
Campbell: “Not the least embarrassing. Simplest thing in the world!”
The Colored Man who calls the Trains, coming and going as before:
“Cars for Newton, Newtonville, West Newton, Auburndale, Riverside,
Wellesley Hills, Wellesley, Natick, and South Framingham. Express to
Newton. Track No. 5.”
Campbell: “Ah, she’s off! She’s going to take the wrong train. She’s
gathering her traps together, Roberts!”
Roberts: “I’ll go and speak to her.” He makes a sudden dash for the
woman in the corner. Campbell takes up his magazine, and watches him
over the top of it, as he stops before the woman, in a confidential
attitude. In a moment she rises, and with a dumb show of offence
gathers up her belongings and marches past Roberts to the door, with
an angry glance backward at him over her shoulder. He returns
crestfallen to Campbell.
Campbell, looking up from his magazine, in affected surprise: “Where’s
your cook? You don’t mean to say she was the wrong woman?”
Roberts, gloomily: “She wasn’t the right one.”
Campbell: “How do you know? What did you say to her?”
Roberts: “I asked her if she had an appointment to meet a gentleman
here.”
Campbell: “You _did_? And what did she say?”
Roberts: “She said ‘No!’ very sharply. She seemed to take it in
dudgeon; she fired up.”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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