rk-brown eyes that seemed to say "Thank you!"
Yet when he would have met those eyes again that evening, when "Last
call for dinner in the dining-car" was sounding through the train, he
could not. Neither were they among those that peered from between parted
curtains in the dim light of the sleeper, many in fright, all in
anxiety, when somewhere in the dead of the summer night, long after all
occupants of the rearmost cars were wrapped in slumber, the long train
bumped to sudden jarring standstill, and up ahead there arose sound of
rush, of excitement and alarm.
CHAPTER II.
It was just after sunset when, for the second time, the hot boxes of the
recruit car had been treated to liberal libations from the water-tank,
and the belated train again moved on.
Dinner had been ready in the dining-car a full hour, but so long as the
sickening smell of burning waste arose from the trucks immediately in
front very few of the passengers seemed capable of eating. The car, as a
consequence, was crowded towards eight o'clock, and the steward and
waiters were busy men.
The evening air, drifting in through open windows, was cooler than it
had been during the day, but still held enough of the noontide caloric
to make fans a comfort, and Mr. Stuyvesant, dining at a "four-in-hand"
table well to the front, and attempting to hold his own in a somewhat
desultory talk with his fellow-men, found himself paying far more
attention to the lovely face of the girl across the aisle than to the
viands set before him.
She was seated facing the front, and opposite the austere maiden
previously mentioned. Conversation had already begun, and now Stuyvesant
was able to see that, beautiful in feature as was her face in repose,
its beauty was far enhanced when animated and smiling.
When to well-nigh perfect external features there is added the charm of
faultlessly even and snowy teeth and a smile that illumines the entire
face, shining in the eyes as it plays about the pretty, sensitive mouth,
a young woman is fully equipped for conquest.
Stuyvesant gazed in fascination uncontrollable. He envied the prim,
precise creature who sat unbending, severe, and, even while keeping up a
semblance of interest in the conversation, seemed to feel it a duty to
display disapprobation of such youthful charms.
No woman is so assured that beauty is only skin deep as she who has none
of it. Her manner, therefore, had been decidedly stiff, and from that
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