“A biscuit-shooter!” said I.

Loyal Mrs. Taylor stirred some batter in silence.  “Well,” said she then, “I’m told that’s what the yard-hands of the railroad call them poor waiter-girls.  You might hear it around the switches at them division stations.”

I had heard it in higher places also, but meekly accepted the reproof.

If you have made your trans-Missouri journeys only since the new era of dining-cars, there is a quantity of things you have come too late for, and will never know.  Three times a day in the brave days of old you sprang from your scarce-halted car at the summons of a gong.  You discerned by instinct the right direction, and, passing steadily through doorways, had taken, before you knew it, one of some sixty chairs in a room of tables and catsup bottles.  Behind the chairs, standing attention, a platoon of Amazons, thick-wristed, pink-and-blue, began immediately a swift chant.  It hymned the total bill-of-fare at a blow.  In this inexpressible ceremony the name of every dish went hurtling into the next, telescoped to shapelessness.  Moreover, if you stopped your Amazon in the middle, it dislocated her, and she merely went back and took a fresh start.  The chant was always the same, but you never learned it.  As soon as it began, your mind snapped shut like the upper berth in a Pullman.  You must have uttered appropriate words—­even a parrot will—­for next you were eating things—­pie, ham, hot cakes—­as fast as you could.  Twenty minutes of swallowing, and all aboard for Ogden, with your pile-driven stomach dumb with amazement.  The Strasburg goose is not dieted with greater velocity, and “biscuit-shooter” is a grand word.  Very likely some Homer of the railroad yards first said it—­for what men upon the present earth so speak with imagination’s tongue as we Americans?

If Miss Peck had been a biscuit-shooter, I could account readily for her conversation, her equipped deportment, the maturity in her round, blue, marble eye.  Her abrupt laugh, something beyond gay, was now sounding in response to Mr. McLean’s lively sallies, and I found him fanning her into convalescence with his hat.  She herself made but few remarks, but allowed the cow-puncher to entertain her, merely exclaiming briefly now and then, “I declare!” and “If you ain’t!” Lin was most certainly engaging, if that was the lady’s meaning.  His wide-open eyes sparkled upon her, and he half closed them now and then to look at her more effectively.  I suppose she was worth it to him.  I have forgotten to say that she was handsome in a large California-fruit style.  They made a good-looking pair of animals.  But it was in the presence of Tommy that Master Lin shone more energetically than ever, and under such shining Tommy was transparently restless.  He tried, and failed, to bring the conversation his way, and took to rearranging the mail and the furniture.

“Supper’s ready,” he said, at length.  “Come right in, Miss Peck; right in here.  This is your seat—­this one, please.  Now you can see my fields out of the window.”