ugh the closed
windows, might stew them stinkily; or, through the open windows, grime
their sweaty faces with hot dust off the hot prairie. There was only one
vacant seat left. It was on the shady side, facing the rear of the car,
and was half occupied already by the humble grub of the squeaky voice.
The girl, Thelma, and the fat little man had taken the seat opposite
him. As Jerry entered the car the little man was on his feet, bowing and
strutting and insisting that a woman with a babe in arms should exchange
seats with him, putting her on the cool side, while he took her place in
the sun across the aisle from Thelma. In the transfer he did not see
Jerry, who was looking in vain for an opening in that mass of "human
various." It was the humble grub who saw her standing there. Evidently
his little yellow-green eyes took her measure at a glance, but he did
not spread out his effects and stare out of the window as some other men
were doing, nor gather himself and his into his own half of the seat to
make room for her beside him. He rose, and in a shrill little quaver he
bade her take his place. It did not occur to Jerry to tell him that
there was room for two, as she saw him shuffle down the aisle with a
queer, limping hitch. In the same impersonal way she watched him through
the open door, sitting on the rear platform during the long afternoon,
humpbacked against the cinders and dust that beat upon him, swaying with
the rocking car, jerked along over a sun-baked, treeless prairie at the
tail of a long jerky freight-train. He meant nothing to this dainty city
product; his kind had never entered her world; no more had the
red-faced, tow-headed young mother, with white eyebrows and hat knocked
rakishly aslant, with her big, restless, bald-headed baby rolling over
her in waves, sprawling about Thelma, and threatening to bump its head
off as it overflowed all the narrow space, aimlessly and persistently.

But if Jerry Swaim felt out of her element in this company, her
fellow-passengers felt much more embarrassed by her presence. Thelma's
neat gingham dress became limp and mussy and common. The tired mother's
yellow lawn was rumpled into a dish-rag. And with every jerk of the
train she lost a hair-pin from her tow hair that was already stringing
down in long wisps on her neck. The baby, really a happy, white,
blue-veined infant, became a fussy flushed impossibility.

All this, it seemed, just because of the presence of a faul