Page:West of Dodge (1926).pdf/310

 the rails, up the kitchen steps, embraced and kissed her with a warmth that moved an envious pang in the railroad doctor's breast.

Mrs. Cottrell stood marveling at the change a few weeks had made in her bare and uninteresting town, glowing with the pleasure of justified faith.

"They're leaving to-day!" Elizabeth announced, dashing back again to the station. There was something near to consternation for a personal loss in her disappointed tone. "Isn't it a shame, just when the town's taking a start!"

"Who's leaving, Lizzie?" Mrs. Cottrell asked, mildly astonished at this display of feeling.

"Mrs. Charles and the jerries," Elizabeth replied, regretfully.

"Oh," said Mrs. Cottrell, a bit loftily.

She had not been able to overcome her original prejudice against railroaders, lady railroaders who lived on wheels in particular. In her eyes Mrs. Charles had broken caste in putting her arms around Elizabeth on the court house steps that day. It had been a well-meant, but unwelcome, intrusion across that military line of social superiority which an officer's wife holds as sacred as an altar in a holy place.

"I'm going to run down to say good-by to her and the girls," Elizabeth announced, "just as soon as I help you up with this stuff."

Kraus was standing by, ill-favored, slouch-shouldered, insolently impatient of the delay, the stuff mentioned lying around him knee-deep in the form of bags and bundles.

"Let's be getting on then," Mrs. Cottrell suggested.