dgeted uncomfortably in his seat.

He found he had been staring into a pair of slate-gray eyes; staring
long, rudely, without knowing it. Their owner was occupying a seat three
removed down the aisle. As he was seated with his back to the engine, he
was thus confronting them.

She was a young girl with indefinite hair, white skin coated with tan,
and a very steady gaze. She would always be remembered for her eyes.
Garrison instantly decided that they were beautiful. He furtively peered
up from under his hat. She was still looking at him fixedly without the
slightest embarrassment.

Garrison was not susceptible to the eternal feminine. He was old with a
boy's face. Yet he found himself taking snap-shots at the girl opposite.
She was reading now. Unwittingly he tried to criticize every feature. He
could not. It was true that they were far from being regular; her nose
went up like her short upper lip; her chin and under lip said that she
had a temper and a will of her own. He noted also that she had a
mole under her left eye. But one always returned from the facial
peregrinations to her eyes. After a long stare Garrison caught himself
wishing that he could kiss those eyes. That threw him into a panic.

"Be sad, be sad," he advised himself gruffly. "What right have you to
think? You're rude to stare, even if she is a queen. She wouldn't wipe
her boots on you."

Having convinced himself that he should not think, Garrison promptly
proceeded to speculate. How tall was she? He likened her flexible figure
to Sis. Sis was his criterion. Then, for the brain is a queer actor,
playing clown when it should play tragedian, Garrison discovered that
he was wishing that the girl would not be taller than his own five feet
two.

"As if it mattered a curse," he laughed contemptuously.

His eyes were transferred to the door. It had opened, and with the puff
of following wind there came a crowd of men, emerging like specters from
the blue haze of the smoker. They had evidently been "smoked out." Some
of them were sober.

Garrison half-lowered his head as the crowd entered. He did not wish to
be recognized. The men, laughing noisily, crowded into what seats were
unoccupied. There was one man more than the available space, and
he started to occupy the half-vacant seat beside the girl with the
slate-colored eyes. He was slightly more than fat, and the process of
making four feet go into two was well under way when the girl spoke.

"Pa