Frontier and pioneer life -- West (U.S.) -- Fiction; West (U.S.) -- Social life and customs -- Fiction; Western stories
Friday forenoon, May 5.--I don't have to gaze at my cat's-eyes to kill
time any more. I'm not the only passenger any more. There's a lady.
She got in at El Paso. She has taken the drawing-room, but sits outside
reading newspaper cuttings and writing letters. She is sixty, I should
say, and has a cap and one gray curl. This comes down over her left ear
as far as a purple ribbon which suspends a medallion at her throat. She
came in wearing a sage-green duster of pongee silk, pretty nice, only
the buttons are as big as those largest mint-drops. “You porter,” she
said, “brush this.” He put down her many things and received it. Her
dress was sage green, and pretty nice too. “You porter,” said she, “open
every window. Why, they are, I declare! What's the thermometer in this
car?” “Ninety-five, ma'am. Folks mostly travelling--” “That will do,
porter. Now you go make me a pitcher of lemonade right quick.” She went
into the state-room and shut the door. When she came out she was dressed
in what appeared to be chintz bedroom curtains. They hang and flow
loosely about her, and are covered with a pattern of pink peonies. She
has slippers--Turkish--that stare up in the air, pretty handsome and
comfortable. But I never before saw any one travel with fly-paper. It
must be hard to pack. But it's quite an idea in this train. Fully a
dozen flies have stuck to it already; and she reads her clippings,
and writes away, and sips another glass of lemonade, all with the most
extreme appearance of leisure, not to say sloth. I can't imagine how she
manages to produce this atmosphere of indolence when in reality she is
steadily occupied. Possibly the way she sits. But I think it's partly
the bedroom curtains.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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