Northern Wisconsin advertiser. [volume] (Wabeno, Wis.) 1898-1925, 1900-11-15
You can drop in upon her when her /

Or you can look at her after she has
gone twice round the links in the blaz-
ing sun and dust-fraught wind. All
these are likely to convince YOU of the
deceitfulness of beauty. But some
women are so fair as to pear each
other and all of these tests. Yet if
you were to put them in a, smoky
close sleeping car. anywhere between.
say, Tucson and Yuma, at the middle
of an August day, they might then be-
come, as everyone else, so ugly that it
would increase your ugliness and bad
bad temper to be forced to look at
them. When woman under these
conditions is still pleasant 20 contem-
plate, you may set it down that her
charms are real and enduring.
Harrington did so in the case of the
girl in Section 2. He was in Section
himself, and her back was turned to
him, but she faced the heveied mirror,
so considerably built in the end of the
car, and he sat so that he could watch
her reflected in it. Besides which he
could see her back hair, which was
brown and looked soft, and which es-
capped in wisps that curled up tighter
ana tighter as the day grew hotter and
hotter.
There were only four people in the
Pullman--a man and a woman who
were not interesting, Harrington and
the girl. The girl was there already.
The only mark on heI traps was sill
yer tag strapped to her satchel. and
Harrington had not been able to get
within reading distance of it. He had
tried hard enough. Neither had he
been able to screw up his courage to
the point of questioning the conductor
He did not believe in discussing wo-
men with the first conner. So he put
his feet on the opposite seat and leaned
back and watched the pretty little
curls and noted how prettily her skin
flushed, and what nice shadow her
lashes made on her cheeks Life would
have been far pleasanter thing if he
could have talked tc her.
The prospect beyond the cinder
guard was so monotonous. That of
course, is putting it very much more
mildly than Harrington did. Ben
Bolt, began to run in his head, which
is bad enough in itself, but when it
times itself to the te-rumpety-rum, te-
rumpety-rump, te-rumpety-rump of
the wheels, is enough to drive a sober
man to drink. The only reason Har-
rington did not drink now was because
he had already had one bottle of beer,
and he was afraid of the opinion. of
the girl. Besides, it flushed his face.
And trembled with fear
at your
frown"-the wheels were turning more
slowly. There was that ugly hush of
uncertainty, of interruption in the nat
ural sequence of things, that falls when
j train slows down in the midst of the
prairie. The sensation of dying must
be rather like it. The train stopped
and the air brakes Kissed Then all
was silence that let you hear the
blood running in your veins, until
there was a crunch of footsteps on the
cinders beside the track.
Harrington put UP his window and
locked out. A group of men stopping
about the wheel of the forward car and
the ringing taps o. hammer upon
iron told the story. 1t was a hot box.
Harrington said, Hang it," and drew
in his head. Pretty soon he got up
and put on his hat and loitered out
When he had joined the group he
glanced along at his car. The girl
was leaning out of her window. He
felt that in time of emergency one
should not handle a situation a la
Somers or Peter Gray. He put his
hands in his pockets, which is always
the way you show that you are just
being casual and offhand and making
no particular point of it, and sauntered
back along the cinder bed until he
stood beneath her window. Then he
raised his hat and told her it was a
hot box. She said, Thank you, very
much" and hoped it would not delay
them, and was very sweet and civil
about it, but it was borne in upon him,
for all that, that it would not be ex-
pected of him to continue the converse
ton. peter takes the North again
and Somers takes the South" he
murmured as he continued on down
to ask the conductor how long they
would have to stop, and lighted a
cigarette. The conductor did not
know. Harrington had not supposed
that he would. But he went back into
the train thoroughly disguised with
everything.
He flung himself into Section with
sigh tina. could be heard In Section
2, and looked out disconsolately over
the prairie, so dull and dreary to those
who see it with duh and dreary eyes
The air went in heat waves so that
the distance seemed to culver, and the
whole prospect was vile. He sat VI
and pressed the electric button. The
bell fairly pealed in the silence, reyer
berated to the horizon. The girl start
ed and looked away from the window
Harrington told the porter to bring
him some iced beer. The girl was
watching him in the mirror. 1t was