standing by with the coffeepots as on other days, the girls stood them on the floor, one at each end of the table. If any jerry wanted a second cup he must go after it, at the risk of somebody hogging his pie while he was gone. That was the Sunday concession to Annie and Mary, the one little break in the rule of service in the lives of the ladies who lived on wheels.
Mrs. Charles summoned the jerries to their meals by beating a resounding signal on a dishpan from the kitchen door. When she was ready for Dr. Hall, usually about half an hour later, she whooped shrilly, or sent Mary running across, or Annie put her head out of the door, fingers between her teeth, and whistled.
On hearing this latter signal this Sunday noon, Dr. Hall got to his feet with alacrity, newspapers flung around his chair, his speculations and conjectures over the doings of last night brought to an abrupt end. The signal to meals was always welome. It was amazing how hungry a man got in that country west of Dodge.
Annie and Mary were fresh as wild roses in their long white aprons and crimped bangs, for not much is needed to make a young woman attractive when she has a hearty good humor and a clean face. Last night's party, even with its interrupted program, had been a refreshing interlude to them. They were gayer for it; Annie had many a laugh to stop in the door of her big mouth with hastily clapped hand.
They had spoken at breakfast of the trouble at the dance, discussed it briefly, and finished with it. Encounters between men were not a strange sight in their eyes; perils and small heroisms were things common to railroad life. To the women of the boarding-train and the
