Page:Caroline Lockhart--The Fighting Shepherdess.djvu/188

 Mrs. Toomey, crimson with mortification and panicstricken as visions of a patrol wagon and station house rose before her, interrupted when Toomey would have continued to argue.

"Jap, stay here while I go to the hotel—I can take a taxi and be back in a few minutes."

Toomey refused indignantly. He declared that not only would this be a reflection upon his honesty, but equivalent to pawning him.

"How'd I know," he demanded shrewdly, "that you'd ever come back to redeem me? "

As Mrs. Toomey cast a look of despair about, her eyes met those of the man who was sitting alone at the table across the aisle. Even in her distress she had observed him when he had entered, for his height, breadth of shoulder, erectness of carriage—together with the tan and a certain unconventional freedom of movement which, to the initiated, proclaimed him an outdoor westerner, made him noticeable.

He was fifty—more, possibly—with hair well grayed and the face of a man to whom success had not come easily. Yet that he had succeeded was not to be doubted, for neither his face nor bearing were those of a man who could be, or had been, defeated. His appearance—substantial, unostentatious—inspired confidence in his integrity and confidence in his ability to cope with any emergency. The lines in his strong face suggested something more than the mere marks of obstacles conquered, of battles lost and won in the world of business—they came from a deeper source than surface struggles. His mouth, a trifle austere, had a droop of sadness, and in his calm gray eyes there was the look of understanding which comes not only from wide experience but from suffering.