American Adventures: A Second Trip 'Abroad at home'. Julian Street
rejoined my companions and, with a radiant dark-haired girl at one elbow and a blonde, equally delectable, at the other, moved across the concourse.
How gay they were as we strolled along! How amusing were their prophecies of adventures destined to befall me in the South. Small wonder that I took no thought of whither I was going.
Presently, having reached the wall at the other side of the great vaulted chamber, we stopped.
"Which train, boss?" asked the porter who had meekly followed.
Train? I had forgotten about trains. The mention of the subject distracted my attention for the moment from the Loreleien, stirred my drugged sense of duty, and reminded me that I had trunks to check.
My suggestion that I leave them briefly for this purpose was lightly brushed aside.
"Oh, no!" they cried. "We shall go with you."
I gave in at once—one always does with them—and inquired of the porter the location of the baggage room. He looked somewhat fatigued as he replied:
"It's away back there where we come from, boss."
It was a long walk; in a garden, with no train to catch, it would have been delightful.
"Got your tickets?" suggested the porter as we passed the row of grilled windows. He had evidently concluded that I was irresponsible.
As I had them, we continued on our way, and presently achieved the baggage room, where they stood talking and laughing, telling me of the morning's shopping expedition—hat-hunting, they called it—in the rain. I fancy that we might have been there yet had not a baggageman, perhaps divining that I had become a little bit distrait and that I had business to transact, rapped smartly on the iron counter with his punch and demanded:
"Baggage checked?"
Turning, not without reluctance, from a pair of violet eyes and a pair of the most mysterious gray, I began to fumble in my pockets for the claim checks.
"How long shall you stay in Baltimore?" asked the girl with the gray eyes.
"Yes, indeed!" I answered, still searching for the checks.
"That doesn't make sense," remarked the blue-eyed girl as I found the checks and handed them to the baggageman. "She asked how long you'd stay in Baltimore, and you said: 'Yes, indeed.'"
"About a week I meant to say."
"Oh, I don't believe a week will be enough," said Gray-eyes.
"We can't stay longer," I declared. "We must keep pushing on. There are so many places in the South to see."
"My sister has just been there, and she—"
"Where to?" demanded the insistent baggageman.
"Why, Baltimore, of course," I said. Had he paid attention to our conversation he might have known.
"You were saying," reminded Violet-eyes, "that your sister—?"
"She just came home from there, and says that—"
"Railroad ticket!" said the baggageman with exaggerated patience.
I began again to feel in various pockets.
"She says," continued Gray-eyes, "that she never met more charming people or had better things to eat. She loves the southern accent too."
I don't know how the tickets got into my upper right vest pocket; I never carry tickets there; but that is where I found them.
"Do you like it?" asked the other girl of me.
"Like what?"
"Why, the southern accent."
"Any valuation?" the baggageman demanded.
"Yes," I answered them both at once.
"Oh, you do?" cried Violet-eyes, incredulously.
"Why, yes; I think—"
"Put down the amount and sign here," the baggageman directed, pushing a slip toward me and placing a pencil in my hand.
I obeyed. The baggageman took the slip and went off to a little desk. I judged that he had finished with me for the moment.
"But don't you think," my fair inquisitor continued, "that the southern girls pile on the accent awfully, because they know it pleases men?"
"Perhaps," I said. "But then, what better reason could they have for doing so?"
"Listen to that!" she cried to her companion. "Did you ever hear such egotism?"
"He's nothing but a man," said Gray-eyes scornfully. "I wouldn't be a man for—"
"A dollar and eighty-five cents," declared the baggageman.
I paid him.
"I wouldn't be a man for anything!" my fair friend finished as we started to move off.
"I wouldn't have you one," I told her, opening the concourse door.
"Hay!" shouted the baggageman. "Here's your ticket and your checks!"
I returned, took them, and put them in my pocket. Again we proceeded upon our way. I was glad to leave the baggageman.
This time the porter meant to take no chances.
"What train, boss?" he asked.
"The Congressional Limited."
"You got jus' four minutes."
"Goodness!" cried Gray-eyes.
"I thought," said Violet-eyes as we accelerated our pace, "that you prided yourself on always having time to spare?"
"Usually I do," I answered, "but in this case—"
"What car?" the porter interrupted tactfully.
Again I felt for my tickets. This time they were in my change pocket. I can't imagine how I came to put them there.
"But in this case—what?" The violet eyes looked threatening as their owner put the question.
"Seat seven, car three," I told the porter firmly as we approached the gate. Then, turning to my dangerous and lovely cross-examiner: "In this case I am unfortunate, for there is barely time to say good-by."
There are several reasons why I don't believe in railway station kisses. Kisses given in public are at best but skimpy little things, suggesting the swift peck of a robin at a peach, whereas it is truer of kissing than of many other forms of industry that what is worth doing at all is worth doing well. Yet I knew that one of these enchantresses expected to be kissed, and that the other very definitely didn't. Therefore I kissed them both.
Then I bolted toward the gate.
"Tickets!" demanded the gateman, stopping me.
At last I found them in the inside pocket of my overcoat. I don't know how they got there. I never carry tickets in that pocket.
As the train began to move I looked at my watch and, discovering it to be three minutes fast, set it right. That is the sort of train the Congressional Limited is. A moment later we were roaring through the blackness of the Hudson River tunnel.
There is something fine in the abruptness of the escape from New York City by the Pennsylvania Railroad. From the time you enter the station you are as good as gone. There is no progress between the city's tenements, with untidy bedding airing in some windows and fat old slatterns leaning out from others to survey the sordidness and squalor of the streets below. A swift plunge into darkness, some thundering moments, and