She kept the talk alive
as others in the car crawled away for the night behind the green
swaying curtains.
With the young man Laura discussed ideas she had got from reading
Ibsen and Shaw. She grew bold and daring in the advancing of opinions
and tried to stir the young man to some overt speech or action that
might arouse her indignation.
The young man did not understand the middle-aged woman who sat beside
him and talked so boldly. He knew of but one prominent man named Shaw
and that man had been governor of Iowa and later a member of the
cabinet of President McKinley. It startled him to think that a
prominent member of the Republican party should have such thoughts or
express such opinions. He talked of fishing in Canada and of a comic
opera he had seen in New York and at eleven o'clock yawned and
disappeared behind the green curtains. As the young man lay in his
berth he muttered to himself, "Now what did that woman want?" A
thought came into his mind and he reached up to where his trousers
swung in a little hammock above the window and looked to see that his
watch and pocket-book were still there.
At home Laura Ormsby nursed the thought of the talk with the strange
man on the train. In her mind he became something romantic and daring,
a streak of light across what she was pleased to think of as her
sombre life.
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