“Baggage checked?”

Turning, not without reluctance, from a pair of violet eyes and a pair of the most mysterious gray, I began to fumble in my pockets for the claim checks.

“How long shall you stay in Baltimore?” asked the girl with the gray eyes.

“Yes, indeed!” I answered, still searching for the checks.

“That doesn’t make sense,” remarked the blue-eyed girl as I found the checks and handed them to the baggageman.  “She asked how long you’d stay in Baltimore, and you said:  ‘Yes, indeed.’”

“About a week I meant to say.”

“Oh, I don’t believe a week will be enough,” said Gray-eyes.

“We can’t stay longer,” I declared.  “We must keep pushing on.  There are so many places in the South to see.”

“My sister has just been there, and she—­”

“Where to?” demanded the insistent baggageman.

“Why, Baltimore, of course,” I said.  Had he paid attention to our conversation he might have known.

“You were saying,” reminded Violet-eyes, “that your sister—?”

“She just came home from there, and says that—­”

“Railroad ticket!” said the baggageman with exaggerated patience.

I began again to feel in various pockets.

“She says,” continued Gray-eyes, “that she never met more charming people or had better things to eat.  She loves the southern accent too.”

I don’t know how the tickets got into my upper right vest pocket; I never carry tickets there; but that is where I found them.

“Do you like it?” asked the other girl of me.

“Like what?”

“Why, the southern accent.”

“Any valuation?” the baggageman demanded.

“Yes,” I answered them both at once.

“Oh, you do?” cried Violet-eyes, incredulously.

“Why, yes; I think—­”

“Put down the amount and sign here,” the baggageman directed, pushing a slip toward me and placing a pencil in my hand.

I obeyed.  The baggageman took the slip and went off to a little desk.  I judged that he had finished with me for the moment.

“But don’t you think,” my fair inquisitor continued, “that the southern girls pile on the accent awfully, because they know it pleases men?”

“Perhaps,” I said.  “But then, what better reason could they have for doing so?”

“Listen to that!” she cried to her companion.  “Did you ever hear such egotism?”

“He’s nothing but a man,” said Gray-eyes scornfully.  “I wouldn’t be a man for—­”

“A dollar and eighty-five cents,” declared the baggageman.

I paid him.

“I wouldn’t be a man for anything!” my fair friend finished as we started to move off.

“I wouldn’t have you one,” I told her, opening the concourse door.

“Hay!” shouted the baggageman.  “Here’s your ticket and your checks!”

I returned, took them, and put them in my pocket.  Again we proceeded upon our way.  I was glad to leave the baggageman.