Page:West of Dodge (1926).pdf/128

 thought was nothing short of paternal gentleness, "has made more infidels than any other force in the world. We all forswear ourselves for love."

"You talk like you've had a lot of experience," she said gravely, with a rueful shake of the head. She looked across her nose at him then, archly, and laughed, throwing her head back to give it free vent, like a meadow lark.

"Are you laughing because I'm funny, or because you're gay?" he asked her, eyes on the curve of her chin and throat with an interest remote from anatomy, far removed from the thought of anatomy, indeed.

"Maybe the boarding-train ladies are responsible for all this forswearing. They say there's all kinds of swearing going on down there."

"I don't believe the girls swear, I never heard them, at least. Mrs. Charles sometimes exercises a lady's privilege that way, but the girls appear to leave it all to her."

"Nice people," she said, just a little edge of sarcasm in her tone.

"Considering that they were raised on wheels, as Mrs. Charles says, they are surprisingly nice girls. Nice in a railroad way, I mean, Miss Cottrell. That's a somewhat boisterous way, I'm afraid, but it can be honest, even though loud."

"Sure," she granted, cheerfully indifferent to the fine points of nicety among ladies raised on wheels.

"I know the three of them are mighty good to the poor jerries I've got in my hospital."

"Hospital? I never heard anything about a hospital in Damascus."

"It's a new institution, a boxcar with bunks in it, and