The Turned-About Girls
Page 3
CHAPTER II
MILDRED, MISTRESS OF CEREMONIES
At the first call for dinner the little girl in the drawing-room lefther pillow, which had grown hot, and her crayola outfit, which had longsince displaced the game of Canfield in her favor. Very glad of thechange, she went with her companion into the dining car. They sat at alittle table, just big enough for two, with shining plated ware and astarched white cloth, and a water bottle plugged with a fresh napkin.The little girl ate soup, and roast beef, and baked potatoes, andasparagus, and vanilla ice-cream with lady fingers, and some preservedstrawberries besides.
Back in the sleeping car the little girl in the checked gingham hadwaited anxiously to see what her neighbors would do when supper timecame. There was no one of whom she could ask questions. She was in theconductor's care, to be sure, but he seemed to her a remote and verygrand person.
Presently she saw that people about her, mothers of families andtired-looking gray women who traveled alone, were taking lunch boxesfrom their bags. Some of them made the porter set up tables for them,but the little girl would never have dared ask such a service from thelordly black man. She placed Mildred in a corner of her seat, and sheheaved up the suitcase, which she found almost too heavy for her, andput it on the opposite seat, which the gentleman with the massive watchchain had left vacant some time ago, when he went (to her great relief)into the smoking car. She opened the suitcase. Inside it, neatly folded,were a fresh nightgown, a change of underwear, a clean dress, in caseher trunk should go astray, a pair of knitted bed shoes, sadly worn, acomb and brush, a fairylike wardrobe which was all Mildred's, and lastlya pasteboard shoe box, full of lunch.
The little girl took out the shoe box and opened it with all sorts ofprecaution not to make crumbs on the floor, or on the beautiful plushseat. In the box were some peanut-butter sandwiches, a hard-boiled egg,two doughnuts, four raisin cookies, some soda crackers, an apple, and apiece of chocolate. She was to eat the sandwiches that night, the eggfor breakfast, the crackers and chocolate for next day's lunch, and thesweets and the apple when she pleased. She was to get water in her owncup, there in the sleeper, and she was on no account to go into thedining car, for the prices that they charged were downright robbery, andlike as not there were ptomaines (whatever they might be!) in the food.So the little girl ate her peanut-butter sandwiches, and her cookies,and drank her cup of water, and thought how wonderful it was to travel,and how nice that she was not homesick--not at all, scarcely!--and notthe least bit afraid.
She had put away the lunch box very carefully, and she was undressingMildred for the night, with Mildred's little nightgown, trimmed withHamburg edging, laid ready on the arm of the seat beside her, when thelittle girl in black silk came strolling back from the dining car. Thelittle girl in gingham knew that she was coming, but she had been taughtthat it was not pretty to stare, so she kept her eyes glued to the weebuttons on Mildred's waistband.
Nobody seemed to have taught the little girl in silk, or, if so, theyhad had their labor for their pains. She stopped short, very firmlyplanted in the swaying car, and she smiled at Mildred who smiled back.
"Jacqueline, please!" said the worried young lady in the blue linensuit, which was not so fresh as when she wore it first aboard the train.
"I'll come in a minute," the silken Jacqueline told her casually. "Iwant to talk to the doll."
At that the little girl in gingham looked up, as she had been dying todo.
"Hello!" said Jacqueline. She had a rebellious mouth, and a squareboyish chin, and brown eyes as direct as a boy's, that could be merrywhen they chose--and just now chose.
The little girl in gingham smiled shyly. She had an oval face, paleolive in tint, not glowing with red through the brown tan likeJacqueline's. Her smile was timid, and her brown eyes were soft.
"She looks like a nice child," thought the young woman in linen, "andeven if she isn't, if Jacqueline has made up her mind to know her, I'mhelpless."
She washed her hands of her charge, as the saying is, and went into thedrawing-room. Don't blame her too severely! She was young, she was wornout with a hard winter's teaching, and after all, Jacqueline, with herlordly ways, had been "wished upon her." She went into the drawing-room,and Jacqueline, like one accustomed to getting her way, sat down in theplace that the little girl in gingham eagerly made for her in the seatat her side.