by A. A. Milne
“But the claim agent knew what hit the road when you put in your claim. That old cow wasn’t worth more than ten dollars and you demanded fifty. Don’t raise the tariff on this milk proportionately, for I’m sure the agent will not allow the claim.”
Mr. Snubbins grinned and chuckled.
“I’ll run my risk— I’ll run my risk,” he responded. “You kin have the milk for nawthin’, if ye want it so bad. Bein’ here all night, I expect ye be purty sharp-set, the whole on ye.”
Mr. Carter had picked up the cans and had gone forward to have the milk thawed out at the boiler fire. Some of the brakemen had cleared away the snow by now and there was an open passage to the outside world. The keen kind blew in, and the pale, wintry sunshine lighted the space between the baggage cars. Mr. Snubbins grinned in his friendly way at the two girls.
“I reckon you gals,” he said, “would just like to be over to my house where my woman could fry you a mess of flap-jacks. How’s that?”
“Oh, don’t mention it!” groaned Bess.
“Is your house near?” asked Nan.
“Peleg’s the nighest. ‘Tain’t so fur. And when ye git out on top o’ the snow, the top’s purty hard. It blew so toward the end of that blizzard that the drifts air packed good.”
“Yet you broke through,” Bess said.
“Right here, I did, for a fac’” chuckled the farmer. “But it’s warm down here and it made the snow soft.”
“Of course!” cried Nan Sherwood. “The stale air from the cars would naturally make the roof of the tunnel soft.”
“My goodness! Can’t you see the train at all from up there?” Bess demanded. “Is it all covered up?”
“I reckon the ingin’s out o’ the snow. She’s steamin’ and of course she’d melt the snow about her boiler and stack,” the farmer said. “But I didn’t look that way.”
“Say!” demanded Bess, with some eagerness. “Is that Peleg’s house near?”
“Peleg Morton? Why, ’tain’t much farther than ye kin hear a pig’s whisper,” said Mr. Snubbins. “I’m goin’ right there, myself. My woman wants ter know is Celia all right. She’s some worrited, ’cause Celia went over to visit Peleg’s gal airly yesterday mornin’ an’ we ain’t seen Celia since.”
Mr. Carter came back with one of the brakemen just then, bearing a can of milk. The kindly conductor had found a tin plate, too— a section of the fireman’s dinner kettle— and into this he poured some of the milk for the hungry little spaniel.
“There you are, Buster,” he said, patting the dog, beside which Nan knelt to watch the process of consumption— for the puppy was so hungry that he tried to get nose, ears and fore-paws right in the dish!
“You’re awfully kind,” Nan said to Mr. Carter. “Now the little fellow will be all right.”
“You better get him out of the way of that fat man,” advised the conductor. “He owns the dog, you know. Bulson, I mean. He’s forward in the other car, gourmandizing himself on a jar of condensed milk. I let him have one can; but I’m going to hold the rest against emergency. Now that the snow has stopped falling,” he added cheerfully, as he passed on, “they ought to get help to us pretty soon.”
The puppy was ready to cuddle down in his carrier and go to sleep when he had lapped up the milk. Nan wiped his silky ears with her pocket handkerchief, and his cunning little muzzle as well, and left him with a pat to go and seek Bess.
She found her chum still talking with Mr. Snubbins in the opening between the two cars. “Oh, Nan!” cried the impulsive one, rushing to meet her chum. “What do you think?”
“On what subject, young lady— on what subject?” demanded Nan, in her most dictatorial way, and aping one of the teachers at Lakeview Hall.
“On the subject of eats!” laughed Bess.
“Oh, my dear! Don’t talk about it, please! If you drew a verbal picture of a banquet right now,” Nan declared, “I’d eat it, verb and all.”
“Do be sane and sensible,” said Bess, importantly. “We’re going out to supper. Now, wait! don’t faint, Nan. This Mr. Snubbins is a dear! Why, he is a regular angel with chin whiskers— nothing less.”
“He’s never invited us to his house for supper?”
“No. His home is too far. But he says we can come along with him to Peleg’s house and they will welcome us there. They are very hospitable people, these Mortons, so our angel says. And he and his daughter, Celia, will come back with us. And we can buy something there at the Mortons’ to help feed the hungry children aboard the train.”
That last appealed to Nan Sherwood, if nothing else did. There was but a single doubt in her mind.
“Oh, Bess!” she cried. “Do you think we ought to go? Shouldn’t we ask permission?”
“Of whom?” demanded Bess, in surprise. “Surely the train won’t steam off and leave us,” and she broke into a laugh. “Oh, come on, Miss Fussbudget! Don’t be afraid. I’ve been asking permission a dozen times a day for more than three months. I’m glad to do something ‘off my own bat,’ as my brother Billy says. Come on, Nan.”
So Nan went. They found Mr. Si Snubbins, “the angel with chin whiskers,” ready to depart. He climbed up first and got upon the crust of the snow; then he helped both girls to mount to his level. So another adventure for Nan and Bess began.
The Runaways
The almost level rays of a sinking sun shone upon a vast waste of white when the two girls from the snow-bound train started off with the farmer toward the only sign of life to be seen upon the landscape— a curl of blue smoke rising from a chimney of a farmhouse.
“That’s Peleg’s place,” explained Mr. Snubbins. “He’s a right well-to-do man, Peleg Morton is. We don’t mind havin’ our Celia go so much with Sallie Morton—though her mother does say that Sallie puts crazy notions into our Celia’s head. But I reckon all gals is kinder crazy, ain’t they?” pursued the farmer, with one of his sly glances and chuckles.
“Always!” agreed Bess, heartily. “Half of our girls at Lakeview Hall have to be kept in straightjackets, or padded cells.”
“Mercy, Bess!” whispered Nan. “That’s worthy of extravagant Laura Polk herself.”
“Thank you,” responded Bess, as the farmer recovered from a fit of “the chuckles” over Bess Harley’s joke. Bess added this question:
“What particular form of insanity do your daughter and Sallie Morton display, Mr. Snubbins?”
“Movin’ picters,” ejaculated the farmer. “Drat ’em! They’ve jest about bewitched my gal and Sallie Morton.”
“Goodness!” gasped Nan. “There aren’t moving picture shows away out here in the country, are there?”
“Oncet a week at the Corner,” said Mr. Snubbins. “An’ we all go. But that ain’t so much what’s made Celia and Sallie so crazy. Ye see, las’ fall was a comp’ny makin’ picters right up here in Peleg’s west parster. Goodness me! there was a crowd of ’em. They camped in tents like Gypsies, and they did the most amazin’ things— they sure did!
“Dif’rent from Gypsies,” pursued the farmer, “they paid for all they got around here. Good folks to sell chicken an’ aigs to. City prices, we got,” and Mr. Snubbins licked his lips like a dog in remembrance of a good meal.
“An’ I vow ter Maria!” the man went on to say, with some eagerness. “We ’most all around here air in them picters; ya-as’m! Ye wouldn’t think I was an actor, would ye?” And he went off into another spasm of chuckles.
“Oh, what fun!” cried Bess.
“Paid us two dollars a day for jest havin’ our photographts took, they did,” said Mr. Snubbins.
“And they paid three to the gals, ’cause they dressed up. That’s what set Celia and Sallie by the ears. Them foolish gals has got it in their heads that they air jest cut out for movin’ picter actresses. They wanter go off ter the city an’ git jobs in one o’ chem there studios! Peleg says he’ll spank his gal, big as she is, if she don’t stop sich foolish talk. I reckon Celia won’t go fur without Sallie.”
“My! it must be quite exciting to work for the pictures,” said romantic Bess.
“Sure it is,” chuckled the farmer. “One feller fell off a hoss while they was up here an’ broke his collarbone; an’ one of the gals tried ter milk our old Sukey from the wrong side, an’ Sukey nigh kicked her through the side of the shed,” and Mr. Snubbins indulged in another fit of laughter over this bit of comedy.
He was still chuckling when they climbed down from the hard eminence of a drift into a spot that had been cleared of snow before the Morton’s side door. At once the door was opened and a big, bewhiskered man looked out.
“Well, well, Si!” he ejaculated. “I thought them was your Celia and my Sallie. Them girls air strangers, ain’t they? Some more of that tribe of movin’ picture actresses?”
“I vow ter Maria, Peleg!” ejaculated Mr. Snubbins. “What’s happened to Celia? Ain’t she here?”
“No. Nor no more ain’t Sallie,” Mr. Morton said. “Come in. Bring in them young ladies. I’ll tell ye about it. Sallie’s maw is mighty upsot.”
“But ain’t Celia here?” reiterated Mr. Snubbins, as he and the chums from Tillbury passed into the warm, big kitchen.
“No, she ain’t, I tell you.”
“But she started over for here yesterday morning, figgerin’ to spend the day with your Sallie. When she didn’t come back at night my woman an’ me reckoned it snowed so hard you folks wouldn’t let her come.”
“Oh, lawk!” exclaimed Mr. Morton. “They was off yesterday mornin’ just as soon as your Celia got here. Planned it all a forehand— the deceivin’ imps! Said they was goin’ to the Corner. An’ they did! Sam Higgin picked ‘em up there an’ took ’em along to Littleton; an’ when he plowed past here jest at evenin’ through the snow he brought me a note. Hi, Maw, bring in that there letter,” shouted Peleg Morton.
That the two men were greatly disturbed by the running away of their daughters, there could be no doubt. Nan was sorry she and Bess had come over from the train. These people were in serious trouble and she and her chum could not help them.
She drew the wondering Bess toward the door, and whispered: “What do you think, Bess? Can’t we go back to the train alone?”
“What for, Nan?” cried Bess.
“Well, you see, they are in trouble.”
At that moment Mrs. Morton hurried in with a fluttering sheet of paper in her hand. She was a voluminous woman in a stiffly starched house dress, everything about her as clean as a new pin, and a pair of silver-bowed spectacles pushed up to her fast graying hair. She was a wholesome, hearty, motherly looking woman, and Nan Sherwood was attracted to her at first sight.
Even usually unobservant Bess was impressed. “Isn’t she a love?” she whispered to Nan.
“Poor woman!” Nan responded in the same tone, for there were undried tears on the cheeks of the farmer’s wife.
“Here’s Si, Maw,” said Mr. Morton. “He ain’t been knowin’ about our girl and his Celia runnin’ off, before.”
“How do, Si?” responded Mrs. Morton. “Your wife’ll be scairt ter death, I have no doubt. What’ll become of them foolish girls— Why, Peke! who’s these two young ladies?”
Mr. Morton looked to Mr. Snubbins for an introduction, scratching his head. Mr. Snubbins said, succinctly: “These here gals are from a railroad train that’s snowed under down there in the cut. I expect they air hungry, Miz’ Morton.”
“Goodness me! Is that so?” cried the good woman, bustling forward and jerking her spectacles down astride her nose, the better to see the unexpected guests. “Snowed up— a whole train load, did you say? I declare! Sit down, do. I won’t haf to put any extry plates on the supper table, for I did have it set, hopin’ Sallie an’ Celia would come back,” and the poor mother began to sob openly.
“I vow, Maw! You do beat all. Them gals couldn’t git back home through this snow, if they wanted to. And they likely got to some big town or other,” said Mr. Morton, “before the worst of the blizzard. They’ve got money; the silly little tykes! When they have spent it all, they’ll be glad to come back.”
“Celia will, maybe,” sobbed Mrs. Morton, brokenly. “She ain’t got the determination of our Sallie. She’d starve rather than give in she was beat. We was too ha’sh with her, Paw. I feel we was too ha’sh! And maybe we won’t never see our little gal again,” and the poor lady sat down heavily in the nearest chair, threw her apron over her head, and cried in utter abandon.
“A Rural Beauty”
Nan Sherwood could not bear to see anybody cry. Her heart had already gone out to the farmer’s wife whose foolish daughter had left home, and to see the good woman sobbing so behind her apron, won every grain of sympathy and pity in Nan’s nature.
“Oh, you poor soul!” cried the girl, hovering over Mrs. Morton, and putting an arm across her broad, plump shoulders. “Don’t cry— don’t, don’t cry! I’m sure the girls will come back. They are foolish to run away; but surely they will be glad to get back to their dear, dear homes.”
“You don’t know my Sallie,” sobbed the woman.
“Oh! but she can’t forget you— of course she can’t,” Nan said. “Why ever did they want to run away from home?”
“Them plagued movin’ picters,” Mr. Snubbins said gruffly, blowing his nose. “I don’t see how I kin tell my woman about Celia.”
“It was that there ‘Rural Beauty’ done it,” Mr. Morton broke in peevishly. “Wish’t I’d never let them film people camp up there on my paster lot and take them picters on my farm. Sallie was jest carried away with it. She acted in that five-reel film, ‘A Rural Beauty.’ And I must say she looked as purty as a peach in it.”
“That’s what they’ve run away for, I bet,” broke in Si Snubbins. “Celia was nigh about crazy to see that picter run off. She was in it, too. Of course, a big drama like that wouldn’t come to the Corner, and I shouldn’t wonder if that’s what took ’em both to the city, first of all. Still,” he added, “I reckon they wanter be actorines, too.”
Bess suppressed a giggle at that, for Si Snubbins was funny, whether intentionally so or not. Nan continued to try to soothe the almost hysterical Mrs. Morton. Mr. Morton said:
“Let’s have that letter, Maw, that Sallie writ and sent back by Sam Higgins from Littleton.”
Mrs. Morton reached out a hand blindly with the paper in it. Nan took it to give to Mr. Morton.
“You read it, Si,” said Mr. Morton. “I ain’t got my specs handy.”
“Neither have I— and I ain’t no hand to read writin’ nohow,” said his neighbor, honestly. “Here, young lady,” to Nan. “Your eyes is better than ourn; you read it out to us.”
Nan did as she was asked, standing beside Mrs. Morton’s chair the while with a hand upon her shoulder:
“’Dear Maw and Paw:—
“’Celia and me have gone to the city and we are going to get jobs with the movies. We know we can— and make good, too. You tell Celia’s Paw and Maw about her going with me. I’ll take care of her. We’ve got plenty money— what with what we earned posing in those pictures in the fall, the Rural Beauty, and all. We will write you from where we are going, and you won’t mind when you know how successful we are and how we are getting regular wages as movie actresses.
“’Good-bye, dear Paw and Maw, and a hundred kisses for Maw from
“’Your daughter,
“’Sallie Morton.
“’P.S.— I won’t be known by my own name in the movies. I’ve picked a real nice sounding one, and so has Celia.’”
“There! You see?” said Mrs. Morton, who had taken the apron down so she could hear Nan the better. “We can’t never trace ’em, because they’ll be going by some silly names. Dear, dear me, Peke! Somethin’ must be done.”
“I dunno what, Maw,” groaned the big man, hopelessly.
“What city have they gone to?” asked Bess, abruptly.
“Why, Miss,” explained Mr. Morton, “they could go to half a dozen cities from Littl
eton. Of course they didn’t stay there, although Littleton’s a big town.”
“Chicago?” queried Bess.
“Perhaps. But they could get to Detroit, or Indianapolis, or even to Cincinnati.”
“There are more picture making concerns in Chicago,” suggested Nan, quietly, “than in the other cities named, I am sure. And the fare to Chicago is less than to the others.”
“Right you air, Miss!” agreed Si Snubbins. “That’s where them pesky gals have set out for, I ain’t a doubt.”
“And how are we goin’ to get ’em back?” murmured Mr. Morton.
“The good Lord won’t let no harm come to the dears, I hope and pray,” said his wife, wiping her eyes. “Somebody’ll be good to ’em if they get sick or hungry. There! We ain’t showin’ very good manners to our guests, Peke. These girls are off that train where there ain’t a bite to eat, I do suppose; and they must be half starved. Let’s have supper. You pull up a chair, too, Si.”
“All right, Miz’ Morton,” agreed Mr. Snubbins, briskly.
Nan felt some diffidence in accepting the good woman’s hospitality. She whispered again to Bess:
“Shall we stay? They’re in such trouble.”
“But goodness!” interrupted Bess. “I’m hungry. And we want to get her interested in the kiddies aboard the train.”
“Yes, that’s so,” agreed Nan.
“Come, girls,” Mrs. Morton called from the other room. “Come right in and lay off your things— do. You are pretty dears— both of you. City girls, I’spect?”
“No, ma’am,” Nan replied. “We live in a small town when we are at home. But we’ve been to boarding school and are on our way home for Christmas.”
“And after that,” Bess added briskly, “we’re going to Chicago for two— whole— weeks!”
“You air? Well, well! D’you hear that, Peke?” as her husband came heavily into the room.
“What is it, Maw?”
“These girls are going to Chicago. If our Sallie and Si’s Celia have gone there, mebbe these girls might come across them.”