Page:Biggers and Ritchie - Inside the Lines.djvu/20

 narrow one, next to the fat Fleming; also there was a vacant place next to Jane Gerson. The Samaritan caught the girl's glance in his indecision, read in it something frankly comradely, and chose the seat beside her. "Very good of you, I'm sure," he murmured. "I did not wish to presume"

"You're not," the girl assured, and there was something so fresh, so ingenuous, in the tone and the level glance of her brown eyes that the Samaritan felt all at once distinctly satisfied with the cast of fortune that had thrown him in the way of a distressed traveler. He sat down with a lifting of the checkered Alpine hat he wore and a stiff little bow from the waist.

"If I may, Miss Gerson—I am Captain Woodhouse, of the signal service."

"Oh!" The girl let slip a little gasp—the meed of admiration the feminine heart always pays to shoulder straps. "Signal service; that means the army?"

"His majesty's service; yes, Miss Gerson."

"You are, of course, off duty?" she suggested, with the faintest possible tinge of regret