As the tight-packed company slid along,
children drowsed or whimpered, short-tempered young men quarreled with the
conductor, elderly folk sat in squeezed, plaintive resignation.... Soon the
lights of foundry fires began to show on the sky; then people started
dropping off in the streets of towns enlivened by the glitter of many
saloons and an occasional loud glare from the front of a moving-picture
theater....
Through these many miles Randolph and Cope sat silent: there seemed to be a
tacit agreement that they need no longer exert themselves to entertain each
other. Cope reached home shortly before midnight. By next morning many of
the doings of the previous day had quite passed from his mind. Yet a few
firm impressions remained. He had had a good swim, if but a brief one, with
a companion who had been willing, even if not bold; he had imposed an
acceptable nomenclature upon a somewhat anonymous landscape; and, in
circumstances slightly absurd, or at least unfavorable, he had done his
voice and his method high credit in song. All else went for next to
nothing.
12
_COPE AMIDST CROSS-PURPOSES_
Next morning's mail brought Cope a letter from Arthur Lemoyne.
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