t to make three of them toe certain well-defined marks in
the matter of clean linen, fresh cravats, and carefully parted hair. Yet
not one of them was really willing to go home till the others should be
coming along too.

In front of the fireplace, later, when Joanna had given them so good a
dinner that it would seem as if their content could hardly be preyed upon
by any contemplation of the future, Bob suddenly voiced the general
sentiment. He was lying on his side upon the hearth-rug, his round face
fiery from his proximity to the blaze.

"Why does it feel so different when you know people are miles away and
getting farther every minute than when you know they've just gone to
town for a party?" he queried, thoughtfully. "They're away just the
same--they aren't here, I mean. Why isn't being away the same thing as
_being away_?"

At any other time this somewhat involved statement of conditions would
have provoked jeers from the company. But no jeers were forthcoming. Max
grunted, lying flat on his back on the couch--whose pillows Joanna had
carefully plumped up--his heels on the arm at the end. Alec, standing at
the window with his hands in his pockets, staring out into the frosty
night, turned about and remarked that on a train averaging sixty to
seventy miles an hour Sally must already be out of the state.

"Wonder if she's asleep," speculated Bob. "She used to like sleeping on
sleepers, when father and mother used to take us around so much. Say, she
had a whole section to herself--at least till we left, and nobody was
coming aboard then. Hope she has the luck to keep it. Funny! The car was
crowded, and so was the next one. I looked in."

"Plenty of people may get on before midnight." reflected Alec.

Jarvis picked up a magazine. "Suppose I read aloud this article on
railroading," he proposed. The company consented and he began. He had not
read two pages before he ran, so to speak, into a series of frightful
railway wrecks. But, wishing he had chosen something else, he kept on
till suddenly Bob interrupted with a fierce: "Cut it! I've got her
knocked into five thousand pieces now--I'll dream of those confounded
smash-ups and Sally in the midst of 'em, if you don't drop that
magazine."

The others murmured a somewhat sheepish assent, and Jarvis turned
willingly enough to a tale of adventure at sea. A snore from the couch
interrupted him in the middle of a most thrilling crisis, and only the
appearance of Joanna