I says:  “That’s fine.  You take this three hundred and eighty dollars you got saved and I’ll put a few dollars more with it and get you a little country place down there where you can be out of doors all day and raise oranges and chickens, and enough hogs for table use, and when the dear boy comes back he’ll be awful proud of you.”

“Oh, he always was that,” says Vida.  “But I’ll go—­and I’ll always keep a light in the window for him.”

And a lot of folks say women ought to vote!

So we start for Los Angeles, deserting Clyde just as mean as dirt.  Sure, I went with her!  I didn’t trust her to finish the trip.  As it was, she wanted to get off the train twice before we got to Chicago—­thinking of the shock to her boy’s tender heart if he should come back and find himself deserted.

But then, right after we left Chicago, she got interested.  In the section across from us was a fifty-five-year-old male grouch with a few gray bristles on his head who had been snarling at everyone that come near him ever since the train left New York.  The porters and conductors had got so they’d rush by him like they was afraid of getting bit on the arm.  He had a gray face that seemed like it had been gouged out of stone.  It was like one of these gargles you see on rare old churches in Europe.  He was just hating everyone in the world, not even playing himself a favourite.  And Vida had stood his growling as long as she could.  Having at last give up the notion of tracking back to New York, she plumped herself down in the seat with this raging wild beast and begged for his troubles.  I looked to see her tore limb from limb, instead of which in three minutes he was cooing to her in a rocky bass voice.  His trouble was lumbago or pleurisy or some misery that kept him every minute in this pernickety state.

That was all old mother Vida needed to know.  She rustled a couple hot-water bags and kept ’em on the ribs of this grouch for about two thousand miles, to say nothing of doping him with asperin and quinine and camphor and menthol and hot tea and soothing words.  He was the only son in sight, so he got it good.  She simply has to mother something.

The grouch got a little human himself the last day out and begun to ask Vida questions about herself.  Being one that will tell any person anything at all, she told him her life history and how her plans was now unsettled, but she hoped to make a home out on this coast.  The grouch come right out and asked her how big her roll was, saying he lived out here and it cost something to make a home.  Vida told him she had her two years’ savings of three hundred and eighty good dollars and that I had promised to loan her a few dollars to piece out with.  At this the old boy looked me over carefully and could see no signs of vast wealth because I never wear such in Pullman cars, so he warns her that I’ll have to piece out her savings with a few thousand instead of a few dollars if she’s to start anything worth keeping, because what they do to you in taxes down there is a-plenty.