He said that in shipping season the road sometimes had to move people about, that she would be more comfortable in the day car anyway, and that they were already late out of the junction. I am not more comfortable in the day car, Jean said. I bought this seat and the one beside it. Pauline laughed once without looking at her. Anyone can carry a piece of paper, she said.
I wrote to this road for the front chair 3 weeks ago. Writing is not buying, Jane said. That was when the car went quiet. She had not raised her voice. She had not said anything clever.
She had simply contradicted a woman with money in front of nine witnesses. And Philip's face went hard, not because Jane was wrong, but because she was making him do this in the open. He told her to come out of the row and let him deal with it before the train lost any more time. Jane stepped into the aisle. She did not let go of Rose.
Philillip suggested in the reasonable voice men use when they have already decided that the child could keep seat too and the mother could ride the daycar until something opened up. Jane looked at him a moment before she answered. You are asking me to put a 10-year-old girl in a car full of strangers and go sit somewhere else. She said her father was buried a year ago tomorrow. Say it out loud again and see if you like the sound of it.
Philip did not say it again. He said instead that the day car was full to the doors on account of the season and that he could not promise two together. If she would not take what was offered, she could get down at Elm Creek and catch the morning train. The service is in the morning, Jane said. Then you will want to make up your mind, Philip said.
He took out the car diagram. It was a stiff folded card, the parlor chairs drawn in ink, the names written in pencil. He opened it against the back of seat three. He put a line through the name in seat one and wrote another name above it. Beside the change, he wrote four words in a small, clean hand.
Jane was standing close enough to read them upside down. At passenger's request, she did not say anything about it. She did not point at it or demand that he scratch it out. She read it and the reading changed her face in a way nobody in that car was watching her closely enough to notice. A minute earlier this had been an insult.
Now it was a record, and a record is a different animal altogether, and she knew that better than any man standing there. Behind her, Rose had gone red from her collar to her hairline and was staring at the floor with both arms locked around the newspaper. A man across the aisle got very interested in the window. A woman two rows back whispered something to her companion and both of them looked at Jane's elbows. That is the thing people never account for afterward.