_Porter_: “Thank you, miss, thank you. If you want anything at all,
miss, I’m right dere at de end of de cah.” He goes out by the narrow
passage-way beside the smaller enclosed parlor. _Miss Galbraith_ looks
askance at the sleeping gentleman, and then, rising, goes to the large
mirror, to pin her veil, which has become loosened from her hat. She
gives a little start at sight of the gentleman in the mirror, but
arranges her head-gear, and returning to her place looks out of the
window again. After a little while she moves about uneasily in her
chair, then leans forward, and tries to raise her window; she lifts it
partly up, when the catch slips from her fingers, and the window falls
shut again with a crash.
_Miss Galbraith_: “Oh, _dear_, how provoking! I suppose I must call the
porter.” She rises from her seat, but on attempting to move away she
finds that the skirt of her polonaise has been caught in the falling
window. She pulls at it, and then tries to lift the window again, but
the cloth has wedged it in, and she cannot stir it. “Well, I certainly
think this is beyond endurance! Porter! Ah,—Porter! Oh, he’ll never
hear me in the racket that these wheels are making! I wish they’d
stop,—I”—The gentleman stirs in his chair, lifts his head, listens, takes
his feet down from the other seat, rises abruptly, and comes to _Miss
Galbraith’s_ side.
_Mr. Allen Richards_: “Will you allow me to open the window for you?”
Starting back, “Miss Galbraith!”
_Miss Galbraith_: “Al— Mr. Richards!” There is a silence for some
moments, in which they remain looking at each other; then,—
_Mr. Richards_: “Lucy”—
_Miss Galbraith_: “I forbid you to address me in that way, Mr. Richards.”
_Mr. Richards_: “Why, you were just going to call me Allen!”
_Miss Galbraith_: “That was an accident, you know very well,—an impulse”—
_Mr. Richards_: “Well, so is this.”
_Miss Galbraith_: “Of which you ought to be ashamed to take advantage. I
wonder at your presumption in speaking to me at all. It’s quite idle, I
can assure you. Everything is at an end between us. It seems that I
bore with you too long; but I’m thankful that I had the spirit to not at
last, and to act in time. And now that chance has thrown us together, I
trust that you will not force your conversation upon me. No gentleman
would, and I have always given you credit for thinking yourself a
gentleman. I request that you will not speak to me.”
_Mr. Richards_: “You’ve spoken ten words to me for every one of mine to
you. But I won’t annoy you. I can’t believe it, Lucy; I can _not_
believe it. It seems like some rascally dream, and if I had had any
sleep since it happened, I should think I—”
_Miss Galbraith_: “Oh! You were sleeping soundly enough when I got into
the car!”
_Mr. Richards_: “I own it; I was perfectly used up, and I _had_ dropped
off.”
_Miss Galbraith_, scornfully: “Then perhaps you _have_ dreamed it.”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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