Then she threw the novel into a corner of the room, set her lower jaw into the square lines of stubbornness, went over to the sleeping telegraph instrument which now and then clicked and twittered in its sleep, called up Shoshone, and commanded the agent there to send down a quart freezer of ice cream, a banana cake, and all the late magazines he could find, including--especially including--the alleged "funny" ones.
"You certainly--are--the prize--fool!" she said, when she switched off the current, and she said it with vicious emphasis.

Whereupon she recovered the novel, seated herself determinedly in the beribboned rocker, flipped the leaves of the book spitefully until she found one which had a corner turned down, and read a garden-party chapter much as she used to study her multiplication table when she was ten and hated arithmetic.
A freight was announced over the wire, arrived with a great wheezing and snorting, which finally settled to a rhythmic gasping of the air pump, while a few boxes of store supplies were being dumped unceremoniously upon the platform.

Miss Georgie was freight agent as well as many other things, and she went out and stood bareheaded in the sun to watch the unloading.
She performed, with the unthinking precision which comes of long practice, the many little duties pertaining to her several offices, and when the wheels began once more to clank, and she had waved her hand to the fireman, the brakeman, and the conductor, and had seen the dirty flags at the rear of the swaying caboose flap out of sight around the low, sage-covered hill, she turned rather dismally to the parlor end of the office, and took up the book with her former air of grim determination.

So for an hour, perhaps.
"Is Miss Georgie Howard at home ?" It was Evadna standing in the doorway, her indigo eyes fixed with innocent gayety--which her mouth somehow failed to meet halfway in mirth--upon the reader.
"She is, chicken, and overjoyed at the sight of you!" Miss Georgie rose just as enthusiastically as if she had not seen Evadna slip from Huckleberry's back, fuddle the tie-rope into what looked like a knot, and step lightly upon the platform.

She had kept her head down--had Miss Georgie--until the last possible second, because she was still being a fool and had permitted a page of her book to fog before her eyes.