But McKnight was growing sulky: he sat looking rigidly ahead, and he did not speak again until he brought the Cannonball to a stop at the station. Even then it was only a perfunctory remark. He went through the gate with me, and with five minutes to spare, we lounged and smoked in the train shed. My mind had slid away from my surroundings and had wandered to a polo pony that I couldn’t afford and intended to buy anyhow. Then McKnight shook off his taciturnity. “For heaven’s sake, don’t look so martyred,” he burst out; “I know you’ve done all the traveling this summer. I know you’re missing a game to-morrow. But don’t be a patient mother; confound it, I have to go to Richmond on Sunday. I—I want to see a girl.” “Oh, don’t mind me,” I observed politely. “Personally, I wouldn’t change places with you. What’s her name—North? South?” “West,” he snapped. “Don’t try to be funny. And all I have to say, Blakeley, is that if you ever fall in love I hope you make an egregious ass of yourself.” In view of what followed, this came rather close to prophecy. The trip west was without incident. I played bridge with a furniture dealer from Grand Rapids, a sales agent for a Pittsburg iron firm and a young professor from an eastern college. I won three rubbers out of four, finished what cigarettes McKnight had left me, and went to bed at one o’clock. It was growing cooler, and the rain had ceased. Once, toward morning, I wakened with a start, for no apparent reason, and sat bolt upright. I had an uneasy feeling that some one had been looking at me, the same sensation I had experienced earlier in the evening at the window. But I could feel the bag with the notes, between me and the window, and with my arm thrown over it for security, I lapsed again into slumber. Later, when I tried to piece together the fragments of that journey, I remembered that my coat, which had been folded and placed beyond my restless tossing, had been rescued in the morning from a heterogeneous jumble of blankets, evening papers and cravat, had been shaken out with profanity and donned with wrath. At the time, nothing occurred to me but the necessity of writing to the Pullman Company and asking them if they ever traveled in their own cars. I even formulated some of the letter. “If they are built to scale, why not take a man of ordinary stature as your unit?” I wrote mentally. “I can not fold together like the traveling cup with which I drink your abominable water.”