Pelham sat on the edge of a chair, his face downcast in mock despair.
"You make me feel so useless, Jane! Not even a dress to hook up the
back----"
Altering a final hatpin, she smiled a query to him. "Is it on straight,
beloved? The train wobbles so.... Dresses were hooked up the back ten
years ago; of course, you've had practice on Mother Judson's.... Stand
up a moment." With great gravity she readjusted his stick-pin. "There!"
He pulled her to the window. "Look--Back Bayou! Though it's really a
pudgy finger of the gulf. And schooners ... this side.... Isn't it
gorgeous?"
The train, perched on a spidery trestle, crawled high above the sloshing
waves, broken by blackened oyster-bed stakes and a skiff slapping
against the dismembered head of a narrow pier. Seabirds rose in glancing
curves, the red face of the sun lit the waters on both sides of the
three-masters tacking out beyond Horn Island. Abruptly the water was
blotted out at the end of the bridge by stumpy sedge fields, stretching
to a fringe of low pines framing the sparkling water beyond ... then
trim white houses. The train slowed.