“Growing up!” echoed Mamie. “I’ve grown up! Why, I’m nearly seventeen!”
“Old enough to know you’re talking nonsense!” she retorted, but with the colour coming and going in her cheeks.
“I’m not!” he protested. “It’s true! If I was younger, Mamie, I’d be falling in love with you!”
“A tremendous age!” she echoed, glancing up at him.
“Well, it’s a good deal,” said Allan, rising with an effort. “And I feel considerably older than twenty-seven to-night—more like forty! You can keep on sitting up, if you want to, but I’m going to bed. Good-night.”
Mamie had risen too, a strange light in her eyes. She watched him as he turned away, and then, when his hand was on the knob of the door, she called him.
“Yes?” he said, turning and looking at her.
The lamplight sent little mocking shadows across her face and brought out the glint of gold in her hair. He held on to the door-knob to keep from going back to her.
“Promise me you’ll not run into any danger,” she said, softly.
“Of course I won’t—not unless I have to.”
“What—run away?” he demanded, staring at her in astonishment. “You wouldn’t have me do that, Mamie?”
“No,” she said, “I wouldn’t have you do that! Good-night, Allan.”
“Good-night,” he repeated, and opened the door and went resolutely up the stair to his room.
And Mamie, standing listening until the sound of his steps died away, at last flung herself down upon the lounge and buried her face in her arms. Her eyes were wet with tears—but they were tears of joy.
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IT is doubtful if any sensation had ever stirred the staid little town of Wadsworth from centre to circumference as did the news to which it awoke next morning. The story of the missing train crew, of the mysteriously abandoned train, flew from mouth to mouth, gaining always in the telling some thrilling detail, the generally accepted version being that the strikers had wrecked the train and butchered the crew, the conductor and brakeman perishing in trying to protect the “scab” engineer and fireman. There was no one to worry especially about the latter, for they were strangers whose names were not even known, but the conductor and the two brakemen all had families, to say nothing of relatives and friends, and all of these were very properly exercised.