The sleeper was quite empty save for a medley of drummers' talk and the
rattle of chips from the smoking room and an old man in a skull cap who
dozed incessantly. Even the porter dozed. She sat the day through
without responding to calls for meals, the rain falling steadily now
like a curtain. At five o'clock the lamps were already burning and a
rash of little lights began to break out over the landscape.
"Some day," she mused, "I'll look back upon all this and laugh. I'll
tell it in a newspaper interview. Lillian Ploag. No, Luella Ploag.
Ploag. No-o, Luella--Luella Parlow! Not bad. Luella Parlow!"
She asked a passing porter the time.
"Six-forty-six!"
* * * * *
She slept fitfully, awakening with little exclamations, and once came so
suddenly out of a doze that she awoke sitting bolt upright, bumping her
head against the top of the berth. Cup her hands as she would against
the window pane, she could not see out, but it seemed to her that dawn
must be imminent. She felt for her little watch, leaning to the streak
of light the curtains let in. Ten-five! Not yet midnight.
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