I fawned on her, and wagged myself about, and opened and
shut my mouth, but no sound came out of it.
It made Miss Laura nervous. She tried to laugh and cry at the same time,
and then bit her lip hard, and said: "Oh, Joe, don't."
"He's lost his bark, hasn't he?" said the man, looking at me curiously.
"It is a wicked thing to confine an animal in a dark and closed car,"
said Miss Laura, trying to see her way down the steps through her tears.
The man put out his hand and helped her. "He's not suffered much, miss,"
he said; "don't you distress yourself. Now if you'd been a brakeman on a
Chicago train, as I was a few years ago, and seen the animals run in for
the stock yards, you might talk about cruelty. Cars that ought to hold a
certain number of pigs, or sheep, or cattle, jammed full with twice as
many, and half of 'em thrown out choked and smothered to death. I've
seen a man running up and down, raging and swearing because the railway
people hadn't let him get in to tend to his pigs on the road."
Miss Laura turned and looked at the man with a very white face. "Is it
like that now?" she asked.
"No, no," he said, hastily.
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