Page:Keeban (IA keeban00balm).pdf/186

 car from Doris. He looked at me, realized he had seen me several times recently and half nodded. I nodded and went on. When I glanced back, he was drifting rearward to the observation car where he sat down and picked up an afternoon paper. With as much casualness as I could manage, I dropped into a chair nearly opposite. The average Chicago to New York twenty-hour-train travel filled the other chairs with their varying degrees of self-consciousness and importance. There were the usual clothing merchants vociferous over discounts and braiding; there were a couple of advertising men lying—unless they were Sarazen and Johnny Black in disguise—about how they did the second nine at Skokie; there was a pleasant, middle-aged married couple, happy to all appearances; there was a mother with a son under her thumb; then there were half a dozen assorted males varying from the emphatic, self-made-man type to mild, chinless youths who might be either chorus men or bond salesmen. They always look alike to me.

And they always irritate me so that I did not notice that another man was beyond them until I observed that George was watching that far end of the car. He wasn't doing it conspicu-