Page:Emma Speed Sampson--The shorn lamb.djvu/13



"I'll be hanged if I give up my lower to her even though she is a hundred years old," muttered Philip Bolling to himself as he tried to make room for his belongings in the Pullman section, already overflowing with a miscellaneous collection of boxes and bags. Crouched in the corner was a tiny little old lady. She held a newspaper before her face with trembling hands, encased in black cotton gloves several sizes too large.

"I reckon I'll have to, though," he added. "Such an old lady would be more trouble over one than under—and then, besides, I shouldn't be grouchy."

Suddenly he burst out laughing, and then to hide his merriment he pretended to sneeze. The little old woman, who dropped her newspaper as the train started, turned out to be not a little old woman at all but a little girl in her early