Dwight Wade, college graduate, former high-school principal, and at all times in the past a cultured and courteous young gentleman, did the first really rude and unpardonable act of his life. He twisted his chin over his shoulder, scowled into the mild, dim, and watery eyes of his interlocutor, and growled:
"Oh, cut it short! What in--" He checked the expletive, and snapped himself up and across the aisle, and slammed down into another seat. The red came over his face. He did not dare to look back at the old man. He hearkened to the rip-roaring chorus in the smoking-car, and reflected that as the new time-keeper he was now one of "Britt's Busters," and that the demoralizing license of the great north woods must have entered into his nature thus early. He grunted his disgust at himself under his breath, and hunched his head down between his shoulders.
In his nasty state of mind he glowered at a passenger who came into the car at the front. It was a girl, and a pretty girl at that. She nodded a cheery greeting to the old man of the grizzled whiskers, and with a smile still dimpling her cheeks flashed one glance at Wade. It was not a bold look, and yet there was the least bit of challenge in it. The sudden pout on her lips might have been at thought of confiding her fresh, crisp skirts to the dusty seat; and yet, when she turned and shot one more quick glance at the young man's sour countenance, the pout curled into something like disdain, and a little shrug of her shoulders hinted that she had not met the response that she was accustomed to find on the faces of young men who saw her for the first time.
While Wade was gazing gloomily and abstractedly at the fair profile and the nose, tip-tilted a wee bit above the big white bow of her veil tied under her chin, one of the crew lurched from the door of the smoking-car, caught off his hat, and bowed extravagantly. It was Tommy Eye. He had to clutch the brake-wheel to keep himself from falling. But his voice was still his own. He broke out lustily:
"Oh, there ain't no girl, no pretty little girl, That I have left behind me. I'm all cut loose for to wrassle with the spruce, Way up where she can't find me. Oh, there ain't no--"