The Salt Lake herald. [volume] (Salt Lake City [Utah]) 1870-1909, 1890-02-23

scene without. A motneriy looking
woman .hadsprod. ced her knitting. and
was blishely clicking way atherneedlee,
w.ifie her eutererising son, youth Of
four summers and undaunted confidence
In human nature, tackled up and down
the aisle and made iInpetuous. incursions
on the various sections by-turns, ereceiv-
ing such modified welcome as could be
accorded features strealed with mingled
candy and cinders, ard fingers whose
propensity to cling to whatsoever they
touched was due no more to instincts of
predatory nature than to the adhesive
properties of the glucose which formed
so large o constituent of the CONNECTIONS
he had been industriog1siy consuming
since early morning. Four men playing
whist in the rear1nost section, two or
three commercial travellers, whose init
macy with the porter and airs of easy
proprietorship told of an apparent con-
trolling interest in the road, young
man of reserved manners, reading in a
section all by himself, a baby sleeping
quietly upon the seat opposite thetwo
passengers first mentioned, and Maltese
kitten curled up in the lap of one of
them, completed the list of occupants.
The proximity of the baby and the
kitten furnishes strong presumptive
evidence of the sex and general condi-
ton of the two passengers referred to,
and renders detail superhuous. A baby
rarely travels without a woman, or a
kitten with a woman already encum-
bered with baby. The baby belonged
to the elder passenger, the kitten to the
younger. The one was a buxom matron,
the other slender maid. In their ages
there must have been a difference diff
teen years; in feature there was still
wider disparity. The elder was q fine
looking woman, and one who prided
herself upon the Junoesque proportions
which she occasionally exhibited in a
stroll for exercise up and down the aisle.
Yet no one would call her beauty.
Her eyes were of a somewhat fishy and
uncertain blue; the lids were tinged
with an monumental pink that told of
irritation of the adjacent interior sur
face and of possible irritability of tenn
per. Her complexion was of that mot
tied type, which is so sore trial to its
possessor and yet so inestimablesa COM
fort to social rivals; but her features
were handsome, her teeth fine, her dress,
bearing and demeanor those of woman
of birth and breeding, and yet one whd
might have resented the intimation that
she was not strikingfy handsome.
She looked like aiwoman with will
of her own; her head was high, her step
was firm; it was Of just such a walk as
hers that Virgil wrote his ''vera incessu
patuit dea," and she made the young
man in the section by himself think OF
that very passage as he glanced at her
from under his heavy, bushy eyebrows
She looked, moreover, like a woman
with capacity for influencing people
contrary to theirwill and Judgment, and
with decided fondness for the exercise
of that unpopular function. There was
the air of grande. dame about her, despite
the simplicity of her dress, which, though
of rich material, was severely plain.
She wore no jewelry. Her hands were
snugly gloved and undisfgured by the
! distortions of any ring except the'mar-
, rage circlet. Her manner attested her
!, a person of consequence in her social
circle and one who realized the fact.
She had repealed, though without rude
, ness or discourtesy, the garrulous. effortz
; of the motherly knitter to be;sociable.
She had promptly inspired the small,
candy crusted explorer with such awe
that he had refrained from further'visits
after his first confiding attempt to poke
sticky finger through the baby 'sgvelNety
cheek She had spared little scorn in her
rejection of the bourgeois advances of
| the commercial traveller with theglan-
gushing eyes of Israel; he conffded to
his comrades, in relating the incident,
that she was smart enough to. see that III
wasn't her he was hankering to know,
but the pretty sister by her. side;a and
when challenged to prove that they were
:, sisters-a statement which aroused the
= skepticism. of his shrewd associates-he
! had replied, substantially:
{ ''How do I know? Cause saw their
pass before you was up this morning,
. Gully. It's for Mrs. Capt Rayner and
y y sister, and they're going out here to Fort
WarreRer. That's how 1 know" And
y the porter of the car had confirmed the
g statement in the sanctity of the smoking
) room.
% And yet-such is the uncertainty OF
J feminine temperament-Mrs. Rayner
, was no more incensed at the commercial
1t ''gent' because he had obtruded his at
a tentions than she was at the young man
u reading in his own section because his
q had refrained. Nearly twenty four hours
q had elapsed since they crossed the Mis-
q souri,, and in all that time not once had
'e she detected in him a glance that be-
4 trayed the faintest interest in her OF
Is still more remarkable-in the unques-
'r tionably lovely girl at her side. Intru-
81 siveness she might resent, but indiffer-
N ence she would and did. Who was this
youth, she wondered, who not once had
e so much as stolen a look at the sweet
u bonny face of her maiden sister? Surely
N twas face any man would love to gaze
le upon-so fair, so exquisite IN contous
e and feature, so pearly IN complexion.
II so lovely in the deep, dark brown of it,
Is shaded eyes.
ry The bold glances of the four card play
ed ers she had defantiy returned and van
TX quished. Those men, like the travelling
Id gents, were creatures of coarser mold
ne but her experienced eye told her the soli
O. tary occupant of the opposite sectionwa,
llf a gentleman. The clear cut of his pal,
e. features, the white, slender hand ans
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