End of train journey

I asked her if she cared for a cocktail. I was feeling in the right mood for once myself. She told me I wasn’t allowed to order drinks. Not snotty, though. She was to charming to be snotty. I can usually get them on account of my height and I have quite a bit of grey hair. I turned side ways and showed her my grey hair. It fascinated the hell out of her. Then she looked at me and asked me what I was afraid she was going to ask. ‘Ernest wrote that he’d be home on Wednesday, that Christmas vacation would start on Wednesday’, she said. ‘I hope you weren’t called home suddenly because of illness in the family’. She really looked worried about it. She wasn’t just being nosy, you could tell. I have this tiny tumour on the brain. She but her hand to her mouth and all. I started to read this timetable I had In my pocket. Just to stop lying. I looked out the window for a while. She got off at Newark. She wished me luck with the operation and all. She invited to visit in the summer, at Gloucester, Massachusetts. I thanked her and said I was going to South Africa with my grandmother. I wouldn’t even visit that sonovabitch Morrow for all the dough in the world, even if I was desperate.