Public-domain ebook
The Turned-About Girls
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In: Children & Young Adult Reading·Novels
Public-domain ebook sourced from Project Gutenberg #46048.
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Strangers on the Limited
At Chicago, on a hot afternoon in early summer, two little girls got aboard the car on the Limited that was bound through to Boston. Both little girls had bobbed brown hair and brown eyes and both were going on eleven, but there all likeness between them ended.
The larger of the two little girls wore a black silk frock embroidered with amber-colored butterflies and curlicues, and black silk knickerbockers. The socks that stopped just below her sturdy brown knees were of black silk, and her black sandals had tiny buckles of onyx. She wore a hat of fine black straw, and in her arms she carried a little black vanity bag, two big books with colored pictures on their jackets, and a box tied up in white paper and gilt cord that screamed--and smelled--of chocolates.
Before her walked a solemn brown porter, laden with suitcases and handbags and hatboxes. Behind her walked a worried young woman, in a fresh blue linen suit. Thus attended the little girl passed along the aisle, with the air of a good-natured young princess, and vanished into the drawing-room at the end of the car. When the solemn-looking porter came out of the drawing-room, he was no longer solemn but smiling, and the piece of silver that he pocketed was large and round.
The smaller of the little girls had watched this progress admiringly, but without envy. She was a serious little girl, and this was her first long journey in the world. She sat very still in her seat, which was back to the engine, and she clasped a doll tight in her arms. The doll wore a neat print dress and frilled underclothes, and though the day was hot, a crocheted sweater and a cunningly made hood. The little girl herself wore a dress of pink and white checked gingham which was a little faded and a little short for her. Her hat was of white straw with a wreath of pink flowers, and her socks were white, and so were her buttoned boots. Over her arm she carried a knitted sweater coat of red, and at her feet stood a large suitcase which had seen much travel.
"Did you see the little girl in black?" she whispered to the doll, whose name was Mildred. "Do you s'pose she's in mourning for somebody? Well, people can be just as sorry inside--we know it, don't we, Mildred?--even if they have to wear last summer's clothes, and they happen to be pink."
Mildred was a very intelligent doll. She had steady blue eyes, a sweet smile, and a shock of flaxen curls. She showed her intelligence by always listening sympathetically and never speaking. So she did not let on now that she saw tears in her young mother's eyes.
Meantime in the drawing-room the little girl in black silk had put down her books and her bag, and hung up her hat, and rung for the porter.
"I want a pillow," she told the worried young lady who accompanied her, "and a table so I can play Canfield and--oh, yes! I want a big long drink of lemonade."
"I'm afraid the porter won't come till the train has started," the young lady told her. "Can't you read your books until then? What are they?"
The little girl resigned herself quite sweetly to going without her pillow and her table, and even her lemonade. She sat down beside her companion and showed her the books.
"This one is about Robin Hood," she said, "but I've heard of him before. This other one is some book!"
"My dear!" the lady murmured in rebuke.
"I'll say it is!" the little girl affirmed. "I read it nights in my berth till Auntie Blair switched off my light. Some book, I'll tell the world! It's called 'The Prince and the Pauper.'"
And if a kind old guardian hadn't happened to give that little girl a gorgeous copy of the beloved romance, when she left Los Angeles, and if the little girl hadn't "eaten it up," and dreamed of it, and lived herself into it on the long railway journey, this story, as you soon will see, would never have been written.
Mildred, Mistress of Ceremonies
At the first call for dinner the little girl in the drawing-room left her pillow, which had grown hot, and her crayola outfit, which had long since displaced the game of Canfield in her favor. Very glad of the change, she went with her companion into the dining car. They sat at a little table, just big enough for two, with shining plated ware and a starched white cloth, and a water bottle plugged with a fresh napkin. The little girl ate soup, and roast beef, and baked potatoes, and asparagus, and vanilla ice-cream with lady fingers, and some preserved strawberries besides.
Back in the sleeping car the little girl in the checked gingham had waited anxiously to see what her neighbors would do when supper time came. There was no one of whom she could ask questions. She was in the conductor's care, to be sure, but he seemed to her a remote and very grand person.
Presently she saw that people about her, mothers of families and tired-looking gray women who traveled alone, were taking lunch boxes from 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 the lordly black man. She placed Mildred in a corner of her seat, and she heaved up the suitcase, which she found almost too heavy for her, and put it on the opposite seat, which the gentleman with the massive watch chain 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 case her trunk should go astray, a pair of knitted bed shoes, sadly worn, a comb and brush, a fairylike wardrobe which was all Mildred's, and lastly a pasteboard shoe box, full of lunch.
The little girl took out the shoe box and opened it with all sorts of precaution not to make crumbs on the floor, or on the beautiful plush seat. In the box were some peanut-butter sandwiches, a hard-boiled egg, two doughnuts, four raisin cookies, some soda crackers, an apple, and a piece of chocolate. She was to eat the sandwiches that night, the egg for breakfast, the crackers and chocolate for next day's lunch, and the sweets and the apple when she pleased. She was to get water in her own cup, there in the sleeper, and she was on no account to go into the dining car, for the prices that they charged were downright robbery, and like 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 not the least bit afraid.
She had put away the lunch box very carefully, and she was undressing Mildred for the night, with Mildred's little nightgown, trimmed with Hamburg edging, laid ready on the arm of the seat beside her, when the little girl in black silk came strolling back from the dining car. The little girl in gingham knew that she was coming, but she had been taught that it was not pretty to stare, so she kept her eyes glued to the wee buttons on Mildred's waistband.
Nobody seemed to have taught the little girl in silk, or, if so, they had had their labor for their pains. She stopped short, very firmly planted in the swaying car, and she smiled at Mildred who smiled back.
"Jacqueline, please!" said the worried young lady in the blue linen suit, 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. "I want to talk to the doll."
At that the little girl in gingham looked up, as she had been dying to do.
"Hello!" said Jacqueline. She had a rebellious mouth, and a square boyish chin, and brown eyes as direct as a boy's, that could be merry when they chose--and just now chose.
The little girl in gingham smiled shyly. She had an oval face, pale olive in tint, not glowing with red through the brown tan like Jacqueline's. Her smile was timid, and her brown eyes were soft.
"She looks like a nice child," thought the young woman in linen, "and even if she isn't, if Jacqueline has made up her mind to know her, I'm helpless."
She washed her hands of her charge, as the saying is, and went into the drawing-room. Don't blame her too severely! She was young, she was worn out with a hard winter's teaching, and after all, Jacqueline, with her lordly ways, had been "wished upon her." She went into the drawing-room, and Jacqueline, like one accustomed to getting her way, sat down in the place that the little girl in gingham eagerly made for her in the seat at her side.
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