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.