The Carter Girls Part 14

"Yes, Cousin Lizzie," said Douglas, "but you see Greendale is a very small station and only the very accommodating accommodations stop there.

The trains with chair cars stop only at the big places."

Douglas was very tired and looked it. She was very pale and her firm mouth would tremble a little in spite of her self-control. No one seemed to notice it, as every one was tired and every one had been busy. She felt when they were once off that she could rest, if only Cousin Lizzie would not complain too much and if Helen and Lucy would not squabble and if dear little Bobby would not poke his head too far out of the window.

Dr. Wright came down to see them off and as he shook hands with Douglas, he looked very searchingly at her tired face.

"You must be selfish when you get to the mountains and rest for a week,"

he said. "You are about all in."

"Oh, I'll be all right in a few minutes. It is just getting started that has tired me. Bobby, please don't poke your head out,--your arm, either. Don't you know something might come along and chop you right in two?"

"I'm a shover for this here train. If I don't stick my arm way out the train a-runnin' up behind us will c'lision with us."

"See here, young man, you are still in my employ and I don't intend to have you working for the C. & O. while you are working for me. When my chauffeur travels to the mountains, he has to keep his hands inside the windows and his head, too. He must be kind to his sisters, especially his Sister Douglas, who is very tired. I am really letting you off duty so you can take care of Douglas. You see, when a lot of women start on a trip they have to have some man with them to look after them."

"That's so, boss, an' I'm goin' to be that man. Women folks is meant to look after eatin's an' to sew up holes an' things. I'm hungry right now!" exclaimed Bobby, man-like, finding some work immediately for the down-trodden s.e.x.

"All aboard!" called the brakeman.

Dr. Wright was bidding hasty adieux when it was discovered that Nan had left the carefully prepared lunch basket in the waiting-room. Poor Nan!

She had been occupied trying to remember some lines of Alfred Noyes about a railroad station and had carelessly placed the basket on the seat beside her, and then, in the excitement of getting Oscar and Susan into the colored coach and picking up all the many little parcels and shawls and small pillows that Cousin Lizzie always traveled with, she had forgotten it.

"Oh, let me get off and get it," she implored, but Dr. Wright gently pushed her back into her seat and hastily whispered something to her that made her smile instead of cry, which she was on the verge of doing.

She sat quite quietly while the engine puffed its way out of the shed and Dr. Wright jumped off the moving train.

She waved to him and he gave her a rea.s.suring smile.

"He is like the hills," she thought. "'I will look unto the hills from whence cometh my help.'"

"Nan, how could you?" started Helen, and Lucy chimed in with:

"Yes, how could you?"

"I am so sorry, but maybe it will come all right, anyhow."

"Come all right, anyhow!" sniffed Cousin Lizzie. "It is all right now as far as I am concerned. I certainly could not taste a mouthful in such surroundings as these."

Douglas put her tired head on the dingy, dusty red plush upholstery and closed her eyes. Food made no difference to her. All she wanted was rest. Bobby opened the package of chewing gum that his employer had slipped him as advance wages, and forgot all about the hunger that he had declared a moment before.

"I ain't a keering, Nan, 'bout no lunch. I am goin' to buy all the choclid an' peanuts what the man brings in the train an' old lunch ain't no good nohow."

Nan kept on smiling an enigmatic smile that mystified Helen and Lucy.

They were accustomed to Nan's forgetting things but she was usually so contrite and miserable. Now she just smiled and peeped out the window.

"I don't believe she gives a hang," whispered Lucy to Helen.

"Looks that way. If she had spent hours making the sandwiches, as I did, maybe she would not be so calm about it."

"I made some of them, too."

"Oh, yes, so you did,--about three, I should say."

"Lots more. You're all the time thinking you make all the sandwiches."

Douglas opened her tired eyes at the sharp tone of voice that Lucy had fallen into.

"Girls, please don't squabble."

"All right, we won't! You go to sleep, honey, and I'll keep Bobby from falling out the window and agree with Lucy about everything even if she insists that Dr. Wright is an Adonis. Come here, Bobby. Helen is going to make up a really true story to tell you," and Helen lifted her little brother from the seat by Douglas. In a few moments he was so absorbed in the wonderful true story about bears and whales that a little boy named Bobby had shot and caught, he did not notice that the train had stopped at the first station after leaving Richmond.

Some excitement on the platform made them all look out the window. The conductor had waved to the engineer his signal for starting when a car came das.h.i.+ng madly up to the station. Frantic pulling of ropes by the accommodating conductor on the accommodating accommodation! A belated traveler, no doubt!

"It's my 'ployer!" screamed Bobby. "Look at him park his car! Ain't he some driver, though?"

It was Dr. Wright, breaking laws as to speed, presuming on the Red Cross tag that the doctors attach to their cars. Several policemen had noted him as he sped through the suburbs, but felt surely it was a matter of life and death when they saw the Red Cross tag, and let him go unmolested and unfined.

"Here it is, Miss Nan!" he called as he waved the heavy basket, endangering the precious sandwiches. Eager hands drew the basket through an open window while a grinning brakeman and a rather irate conductor got the train started once more.

"Here's some aromatic ammonia! Make Miss Douglas take a teaspoonful in a gla.s.s of water," he said to Helen as he handed a small vial to her over Bobby's head. "It almost made me miss the train, but she must have it."

"Oh, Dr. Wright, I am so much obliged to you. You are very kind to us."

"Helen's been making up a wonderfulest true story for me," called Bobby, leaning out dangerously far to see the last of his 'ployer. "So I'm being good an' not worrying Douglas."

There was unalloyed approval now in the blue, blue eyes, and Helen thought, as the young doctor gave one of his rare smiles, that he was really almost handsome.

CHAPTER XI.

THE CAMP.

The lunch did not go begging. Even Cousin Lizzie forgot her disgusting surroundings and deigned to partake of Helen's very good lettuce sandwiches. She even p.r.o.nounced the coffee from the thermos bottle about the best she had tasted for many a day.

"My cook doesn't make very good coffee. I don't know what she does to it. When we go back to Richmond I think I shall get you to show her how you make it, Helen."

Helen smiled and had not the heart to tell her cousin that her own cook had made the coffee, after all. Of all the young Carters, Miss Somerville was fondest of Helen. She had infinite patience with her foibles and thought her regard for dress and style just as it should be.

"A woman's appearance is a very important factor and too much thought cannot be given it," she would say. Miss Somerville had boasted much beauty in her youth and still was a very handsome old lady, with a quant.i.ty of silver white hair and the complexion of a debutante.

"Gentlemen are more attracted by becoming clothes than anything else,"

she declared, "and of course it is nothing but hypocrisy that makes women say they do not wish to attract the opposite s.e.x." Miss Somerville, having had many opportunities to marry, and having chosen single blessedness of her own free will, always spoke with great authority of the male s.e.x. She always called them gentlemen, however, and the way she said "gentlemen" made you think of dignified persons in long-tailed coats and high stocks who paid their addresses on bended knees.

"Only one more station before we get to Greendale!" exclaimed Douglas.

"I feel real rested."

"That's cause I'se been so good," said the angel Bobby. "I ain't a single time had my head an' arm chopped off. I tell you, I don't do shover's work for the C. & O. for nothin'. My boss don't 'low me to work for n.o.body but jest him."