it's not like strangers."

"That hasn't anything to do with it," affirmed Mary Leonard, stoutly;
"if there were more, it would be the same way. But I will say," she went
on, "that I never could see why a woman travelling alone should ever
have any trouble--officials and everybody are so polite about telling
you the same thing over. I don't know why it is, but I always seem to
expect the next one I ask to tell me something different about a train;
and then everybody you meet seems just as pleasant as can be."

"Yes," assented Lucy Eastman, "like that baggageman. Did you notice how
polite the baggageman was?"

"Notice it! Why, of course I did. And our trunks _were_ late, and it
was my fault, and so I told him, and he just hurried to pull them around
and check them, and I was so confused, you know, that I made him check
the wrong ones twice."

"Well, they were just like ours," said Lucy Eastman, sympathetically.

"Well, they were, weren't they? But of course I ought to have known. And
he never swore at all. I was dreadfully afraid he'd swear, Lucy."

"Oh, dear!" exclaimed Lucy Eastman, distressed, "what would you have
done if he'd sworn?"

"I'm sure I don't know," asserted Mary Leonard, with conviction, "but
fortunately he didn't."

"He got very warm," said Lucy, reminiscently. "I saw him wiping his brow
as we came away."

"I don't blame him the least in the world. I think he was a wonderfully
nice baggageman, for men of that class are so apt to swear when they get
very warm,--at least, so I've heard. And did you hear--"

"Tickets, ma'am," observed the conductor.

"There, I didn't mean to keep you waiting a minute;" and Mary Leonard
opened her pocketbook, "but I forgot all about the tickets. Oh, Lucy, I
gave you the tickets, and I took the checks."

"Yes, to be sure," said Lucy, opening her pocketbook.

"I'll put them in the seat for you, ladies, like this," said the
conductor, smiling, "and then you won't have any more trouble."

"Oh, yes, thank you," said Lucy Eastman.

"What a nice conductor!" observed Mary Leonard.

"Did I hear what, Mary?--you were telling me something."

"Oh, about the baggageman. I heard him say to his assistant, 'Don't you
ever git mad with women, Bobby. It ain't no use. If it was always the
same woman and the same trunk, perhaps you could learn her sometime; but
it ain't, and you've got to take 'em just as they come, and get rid of
'em the best way you can--they don't bear inst