"I wish I could sthay wid ye, Frankie, me b"y," said Barney, one day.
"Stay with me? What do you mean?" asked Frank.
"Oi have news from home. Oi must go back to Fardale to rasume me studies."
"I"ll be sorry to lose you Barney." And Frank spoke the truth, for he loved his Irish chum a good deal.
Just then Professor Scotch burst in on the pair, telegram in hand.
"I must return East at once," he cried. "A relative of mine has died and I must settle up his affairs."
"Two at once!" e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed Frank. "Then I"ll be left to continue my travels alone."
"Not for long, my boy," answered the professor. "I will soon return to see that you fall into no more danger."
Two days later found Frank alone, the professor and Barney have taken the eastbound train the evening before. Frank proceeded to Ogden, Utah, where he spent three days in sight-seeing.
But he was anxious to go farther West, and one fine day found him a pa.s.senger on the Pacific Express, bound for San Francisco.
Every seat in the parlor cars was taken, as Frank discovered, on endeavoring to obtain one. Then he decided that any kind of a seat would do, but nearly every one was occupied.
As he pa.s.sed through the train, he noticed a girl of seventeen or eighteen who seemed to be sitting alone. She was reading, and, as Frank came along, she dropped the book in her lap, looked up, and smiled.
Frank touched his hat, paused, and asked:
"Is this seat taken, miss?"
"No, sir."
"Would you object----"
He paused significantly, smiling back at her.
"Not at all," was her immediate reply, as she drew a bit nearer the window, and he sat down.
The book in the girl"s lap was a noted one of detective tales. Frank caught his breath in astonishment as he noted this.
"Queer literature for such a girl to be perusing," was his mental observation.
He cast a sly glance at her. She was looking out of the window, but the side of her face was toward him. Frank noted that she had a beautiful profile, and that there was a most innocent and winsome expression about her mouth. Her hair was golden and her eyes were blue.
There was a refinement and delicacy about the girl which impressed Frank favorably.
Still, he wondered that a girl like her should be reading a book of detective tales. She was the sort of a girl he would have expected to see perusing love stories of the "Bertha M. Clay" cla.s.s.
He longed to get into conversation with her, and yet, for all of the smile with which she had seemed to greet him, something held him back and told him it was not wise to be too forward.
At last she resumed reading again. She did not read long. With a faint, scornful laugh, she dropped the book in her lap.
Frank fancied he saw an opportunity to "break the ice."
"You do not seem to like those stories," he observed.
"They are very amusing, and utterly improbable and impossible," she said.
The boy laughed.
"Then you fancy the author overdrew his hero?" he asked.
"To be sure he did. There is no detective living who can do such astonishing things as this one is credited with. No such detective ever lived."
"Possibly not."
"Surely not. You cannot make me believe that a detective could come in here, look me over, and then tell everything about me almost to my name and the hour of my birth. Rubbish!"
Frank"s wonder at the girl was on the increase. She did not talk much like the ordinary girl of seventeen.
"If you dislike the stories so much how does it happen you are reading them?"
"Oh, I do not dislike them. I confess that I found them very amusing, but I am beginning to weary of them."
"I consider it remarkable that you attempted reading them."
"Why?"
"Young ladies like you seldom care for this kind of literature."
"Oh, I see. I presume not. They are too sentimental--soft, some call it.
Well, I am not sentimental."
"Perhaps not."
She lifted her eyebrows and pursed her lips a bit.
"You say that as if you do not believe me. Never mind. It makes no difference whether you believe me or not."
She did not seem offended, and still she gave him to understand that what he thought was of little consequence to her.
"Well," laughed Frank, "I have never yet met a girl who did not declare she was bound to be an old maid, and those are the very ones who get married first."
"And you think, because of that, that I must be sentimental, as I have said that I am not, do you?"
"Oh, well--you see--I--I----"
She interrupted him with a merry laugh.
"Do not be afraid to answer. I don"t mind. We are strangers, and why should I be offended?"
"It is true we are strangers," said Frank; "and, as we may be seatmates for some time to come, I will offer my card."