XIII
A hot night in the Pullman---too hot to sleep in anything but a series of
uneasy drowsings and wakings. Smell of blankets and cinders and general
unwashedness--noise of clacketing wheels and a hysterical whistle--anyhow
each sweaty hour brings St. Louis and Nancy nearer. St. _Nancy_, St.
_Nancy_, St. _Nancy_, says the sleepless racket of the wheels, but the
peevish electric fan at the end of the corridor keeps buzzing to itself
like a fly caught in a trap. "And then I got married you see--and then I
got married you see--and when you get married you aren't a free lance--you
aren't a free lance--you're _settled_!"
It will have to be pretty grand news indeed that Nancy has to make up for
this last week and the buzz of the electric fan, thinks Oliver, twisting
from one side of his stuffy berth to the other like an uneasy sardine.
XIV
"More beans, Oliver," says Mrs. Ellicott in a voice like thin syrup, her
"generous" voice. The generous voice is used whenever Mrs. Ellicott wants
to show herself a person of incredibly scrupulous fairness before that
bodiless assemblage of old women in black that constitute the They who
Say--and so it is used to Oliver nearly all the time.
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