“What a dreadful night you must have had, Mr. Ford,” said Alicia, when the tuberculotic subject was well launched at the other end of the table.  “Were you on the engine all the time?”

“Most of the time,” he confessed.  “But that was nothing.  It wasn’t my first night in the cab, as it won’t be the last, by many, I hope.”

“Why?  Do you like it?”

“Not particularly.  But I hope to live a while longer; and while I live I shall doubtless have to ride with the enginemen now and then.”

“Was it very bad—­last night?” she asked.

“I am afraid you know it was.  Could you sleep at all?”

“Oh, yes; I slept very well—­after that terrible shaking up we had just before bedtime.  What was happening then?”

“Nothing much.  We were about to try the old experiment of passing two trains on a single track.”

“Mercy!” she exclaimed.

It was safely retrospective now, and Ford could smile at her belated shock.

“Were the others alarmed?” he asked.

“Mrs. Van Bruce and Aunt Hetty were.  But Uncle Sidney fairly coruscated.  He said that an engineer who would make such a stop as that ought to be discharged.”

“Hector was willing to quit,” laughed Ford.  “He grumbled for a full hour afterward about the wrenching he had given the 1012.  You see he might have taken about six feet more for the stop, if he’d only known it.”

Miss Alicia said “Mercy!” again.  “Were we as near as that to a collision?” she asked, in a hushed whisper.

“We were, indeed.  The freight was supposed to be on a siding—­broken down.  The crew tinkered things up some way, and the train proceeded.  Luckily, the freight engineer saw our electric headlight farther than we could see his oil lamp, and the track happened to be measurably straight.”

Miss Adair was silent for a little time, waiting for the lapsed tuberculotic discussion to revive.  When it was once more in full swing, she asked quickly: 

“What is the programme for to-day?  Must we all stay in the car as you intimated yesterday?”

Ford glanced across the table to make sure that Penfield was not eavesdropping.

“It will not be necessary.  Your coming—­or the president’s—­has reformed things wonderfully.  Frisbie says—­but never mind what he says:  the miracle has been wrought.”

He said it with such an evident air of dejection that she wondered.  And with Miss Alicia Adair the step from wonderment to investigation was always short.

“You say it as if you were sorry,” she said.  “Are you?”

“Oh, no; I’m glad—­for your sake.  But I wonder if you could understand if I say that it will make it a thousand times harder for me?”

“I can understand when I’m told,” she retorted.

The table-for-eight was no place for confidences; and Ford knew Penfield’s weakness for soaking up information.  Yet he took the risk.