The Lightning Conductor Discovers America

								

he was standing at some distance pointing out porpoises to passengers
and rather conspicuously not seeing us. I couldn't yell, "Mr. Storm,
you've lost part of a letter you were writing!" But I thought it was the
sort of letter he wouldn't want knocking about, so I said in a loud
voice to our attendant officer, "Oh, somebody has dropped a sheet of
paper with writing on it!"
I expected Storm to start dramatically, feel in his pocket, and perhaps
claim his property with a keen glance at my face to see whether I had
read anything. I intended of course to put on what Jack calls my "rag
doll expression," one which I find most useful in social intercourse.
But the man didn't start. He could not have helped hearing my siren
hoot, but he never turned a hair or anything else. He went on pointing
out perfectly irrelevant porpoises. I had to admire his nerve! For
instantly I seemed to read the inner workings of his mind, and
understood that he'd deliberately decided not to claim the paper. He
guessed that I'd read the exciting words, and his mental message to me
was: "Do what you like, my dear madam, and be d----."
I called out again for whom it might concern, "Somebody's lost part of a
letter!" but no one took any interest in the announcement, so I added,
with an eye on the back of the Mystery's neck, "Well, I suppose there's
no use keeping it." I crumpled the paper into a ball, and tossed it over
the rail where it couldn't be missed by the eye of Mr. Storm.
"He'll be glad to know I'm not showing it about, or brooding over it
like a bit of a jigsaw puzzle," I thought. But the eye I wished to catch
remained glued to the porpoises, and only they could tell whether it
darkened with dread or twinkled with suppressed laughter. Even Mrs.
Shuster hadn't the "cheek" to try and attract the man's attention, and
we returned to our own class thanking our conductor for "all the
interesting things he had shown us." I wondered if he knew that while we
spoke in plural we thought in singular!
"The dreadful old lady will never let go of that poor fellow till
she's ruined all the romance, and made him a respectable paid propaganda
or something!" sighed Patsey Moore when we were tucked into our deck
chairs once more.
I laughed, but saw that she was quite serious, almost tragic. One of her
charms is her funny English. She's lived in France and talked French so
long that she has to translate herself into English, so to speak; and
sometimes she has the quaintest conception of how to do it. Also she
rolls her "rs"; and if the Mystery had heard himself alluded to by her
as a "pr-r-opoganda" he would never have forgotten it. As for Mrs.
Shuster--she mightn't have minded the Maxim gun of that long-drawn
"d-r-r-readful!" but her very vitals would have melted over the "old
lady." Despite her largeness and oddness of appearance generally, she
considers herself a young widow, with a personal fascination beyond
that of her banking account. I, with the mellow leniency of--let me