IN THE BISHOP'S CARRIAGE

When the thing was at its hottest, I bolted. Tom, like the darling he
is--(Yes, you are, old fellow, you're as precious to me as--as you are
to the police--if they could only get their hands on you)--well, Tom
drew off the crowd, having passed the old gentleman's watch to me, and
I made for the women's rooms.

The station was crowded, as it always is in the afternoon, and in a
minute I was strolling into the big, square room, saying slowly to
myself to keep me steady:

"Nancy, you're a college girl--just in from Bryn Mawr to meet your
papa. Just see if your hat's on straight."

I did, going up to the big glass and looking beyond my excited face to
the room behind me. There sat the woman who can never nurse her baby
except where everybody can see her, in a railroad station. There was
the woman who's always hungry, nibbling chocolates out of a box; and
the woman fallen asleep, with her hat on the side, and hairpins
dropping out of her hair; and the woman who's beside herself with fear
that she'll miss her train; and the woman who is taking notes about the
other women's rigs. And--

And I didn't like the look of that man with the cap who opened the
swinging door a bit and peeped in. The women's waiting-room is no
place for a man--nor for a girl who's got somebody else's watch inside
her waist. Luckily, my back was toward him, but just as the door swung
back he might have caught the reflection of my face in a mirror hanging
opposite to the big one.

I retreated, going to an inner room where the ladies were having the
maid brush their gowns, soiled from suburban travel and the dirty
station.

The deuce is in it the way women stare. I took off my hat and jacket
for a reason to stay there, and hung them up as leisurely as I could.

"Nance," I said under my breath, to the alert-eyed, pug-nosed girl in
the mirror, who gave a quick glance about the room as I bent to wash my
hands, "women stare 'cause they're women. There's no meaning in their
look. If they were men, now, you might twitter."