So much I had learned of the I.I. and C. when it came time for me to flee to the train.  My companion and I had already packed our suitcases, and it had been arranged between us that, instead of consuming time by trying to meet and drive together to the station, we should work independently, joining each other at the train.

I left the college in an automobile, stopping at Mrs. Eichelberger’s only long enough to get my suitcase.  As I drove on past the next corner I chanced to look up the intersecting street.  There, by a lilac bush, stood my companion.  He was not alone.  With him was a very pretty girl wearing a soft black dress and a corsage of narcissus.  But the corsage was now smaller, by one flower, than it had been before, for, as I sighted them, she was in the act of placing one of the blooms from her bouquet in my companion’s buttonhole.  Her hands looked very white and small against his dark coat, and I recall that he was gazing down at them, and that his features were distorted by a sentimental smile.

“Come on!” I called to him.

He looked up.  His expression was vague.

“Go along,” he returned.

“Why don’t you come with me now?”

“I’ll be there,” he replied.  “You buy the tickets and check the baggage.”  And with that he turned his back.

“Good-by,” I called to the young lady.  But she was looking up at him and didn’t seem to hear me.

* * * * *

My companion arrived at the station in an old hack, with horses at the gallop.  He was barely in time.

When we were settled in the car, bowling along over the prairies toward the little junction town of Artesia, I turned to him and inquired how his work had gone that morning.  But at that moment he caught sight, through the car window, of some negroes sitting at a cabin door, and exclaimed over their picturesqueness.

I agreed.  Then, as the train left them behind, I repeated my question:  “How did your work go?”

“This is very fertile-looking country,” said he.

This time I did not reply, but asked: 

“Did you finish both sketches?”

“No,” he answered.  “Not both.  There wasn’t time.”

“Let’s see the one you did.”

“As a matter of fact,” he returned, “I didn’t do any.  You know how it is.  Sometimes a fellow feels like drawing—­sometimes he doesn’t.  Somehow I didn’t feel like it this morning.”

With that he lifted the lapel of his coat and, bending his head downward, sniffed in a romantic manner at the sickeningly sweet flower in his buttonhole.

CHAPTER XLV

VICKSBURG OLD AND NEW

I should advise the traveler who is interested in cities not to enter Vicksburg by the Alabama & Vicksburg Railroad, which has a dingy little station in a sort of gulch, but by the Yazoo & Mississippi Valley Railroad—­a branch of the Illinois Central—­which skirts the river bank and flashes a large first impression of the city before the eyes of alighting passengers.