It's like any other stars. The first officer on the P & O
line always asks me to come and see it. Then he proposes. J. G.
plays poker the whole trip. He can't lose. He says it's tiresome."
The strange dialogue went on for what might have been an hour. Far
ports and foreign streets, full sails and thronged inns, the
fountains of paved courts, the market squares of dark and vivid
nations, blossomed from the tongue of this chair-bound woman in her
farmhouse prison; and from the blind, unhappy voyager came halting,
telegraphic phrases: climate and train schedules and over-lavish
fees, miles and meals and petty miseries. No sunset had stained her
hurried way, no handed flowers from shy street children had
sweetened it. And ever and again she returned insistently to the
barnyard interests of the Winterpines!
"See here!" she burst out suddenly, "I'll tell you what I'll do! I
told J. G. that I wouldn't go another step with him--mascot or no
mascot. He wants to go over the Himalayas--to start next week--he
has an idea. But if you'll go, I'll take you! What do you say? My
guest, of course: it don't cost you a penny."
The woman turned utterly white. Where her knuckles gripped the arms
of the chair they showed a bluish tinge.
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