“What a wonderful sleep!” Jane was just stretching out in her bunk. “I
suppose Judy is up and dressed, and interviewing the crew.” She pulled
the little window curtain back cautiously, and sent her half-opened
eyes after the fleeting landscape. “And a lovely day. I am glad of
that, for even in a train one enjoys fresh, clean weather.” She slipped
into the dark blue travelling kimono, and slippers to match, in which
Jane might make her way to the dressing room without attracting undue
attention. Thus attired she put her hand up to give the curtain of the
upper, Judy’s berth, a signal yank.
“Judith,” she called lightly. “Are you up, Judith?”
No answer. Her chum was, she presumed, dressed and out for exercise.
With the convenient little dressing bag Jane hurried off to make her
day’s toilette, being assured she would meet Judith either on the way
to, or in the ladies’ room.
But Judith was not in sight, neither along the way nor in the
dressing-room. Jane made her toilette in haste, and thus refreshed from
the “wonderful sleep” polished off with accessories of the best
travelling comforts, she stepped from the compartment.
“Where can Judy be?” she asked herself in some anxiety. Then the entire
length of the coach was covered, to make sure the girl had not buried
herself deep in a seat beside some new-found acquaintance. But no Judy
was to be sighted.
Jane returned to her berth and signalled the porter he might “make it
up.” At an opportune moment she asked him had he seen her friend.
“No, Miss, that is, not since quite early. She went out to the
observation, but I saw her come back. No one out there now,” replied
the white-linened porter.
The thought of the observation car, with its open-end vestibule gave
Jane a little shiver. Of course Judith was accustomed to travel.
Nothing could happen to her. Still, where was she?
“I’ll take another look in the observation,” she remarked. “I fancy she
might like to see early morning developing.” And Jane left the porter
with his tasks.
It seemed everyone was passing into their breakfast with that avidity
so marked in hotels and “en routes,” when people have so little to
think of except eating, drinking and sleeping. Jane felt the call of an
appetite herself, but had no thought of going to breakfast without
Judith. Where could the girl be? Each probable rendezvous uncovered
negatively, added to Jane’s momentarily increasing anxiety.
“Strange!” she commented. “Judy is always ready to exchange notes in
the morning. She would hardly undertake anything so absorbing as to
keep her away all this time. Besides, what could she find engrossing on
this Limited?”
Finally realizing she could not find her chum, she sought out her
faithful porter. Not delaying to ring the bell, Jane looked about and
soon found Alfred (this was his name she overheard) arranging cushions
on the rear sofa, for a baby to rest there.
“I can’t locate my friend,” she began. “Have you seen her?”
“Say, Alf,” interrupted another member of the working force coming up
from the next car. “I got a—what do you call a sonomballist? The sort
that plays baseball in a sound sleep,” the black-faced man grinned. “I
got a strange lady in a strange place, and she belongs in your car. You
got to extract her.”
“What—what you—all mean, Ferd?” asked Alf, while Jane waited
apprehensively.
“You come along wiff me and I’ll demonstrate,” proposed Ferd, otherwise
Ferdinand. “I’se been argufying wiff de lady, didn’t like to shake her
zactly. But she don’t pear to want to come back to you, Alf. She has
took a notion to me.” He grinned and chuckled in the good nature
characteristic of the well-trained Pullman porter.
Jane listened with increasing anxiety. It might really be Judith, but
where was she?
“What you asked for, please?” Alfred inquired of Jane. “Ferdinand has
no ’cuse to interrupt,” he apologized.
“Oh, that was all right,” Jane quickly assured him. “I wonder if he may
have found my—friend?”
“Not likely a young lady,” said Alfred with a strong emphasis on
_young_. As if an _old_ lady might be suspected of anything queer, but
that a young miss would assuredly hardly be so careless.
“But my friend is very absent minded.” Jane prepared him. “She does
queer things through forgetfulness.”
“Can you come right now?” insisted the waiting Ferd to Jane’s porter.
“I’se got to get rid of this—lady somehow.”
“I’ll go too, if I may?” timidly inquired Jane. “I have lost a friend”
(this to Ferd). “She is very absent minded.”
“Laikly she is my—discovery,” ventured the colored man striving to be
polite and finding it difficult to treat the situation seriously. “Come
right along.”
At the other end of the car Jane stood stock still, as she read the
sign “Gentlemen Smoking.” But Ferd promptly assured her.
“Not a soul in here but the lady. Not a man could get in, and there was
some kicking. All right for ladies to smoke. Lots of ’em do, but they
has to have their own private quarters.” He was opening the door of the
smoking room with that caution usually displayed if a cat is expected
to jump. Jane followed, and once within the room she sprang to the
curled up figure, sleeping peacefully, in the big cushioned chair. It
was Judith!
“Judith!” Jane called. “Judy, wake up! Come!”
The unconscious girl slowly—too slowly, came back to the realm of
directed thought. She was awake at last.
“Why—Jane—” she drawled. “What’s the fuss? I was dreaming about
wonderful cigars.”
Both porters stepped back respectfully—or to laugh safely. Dreaming of
cigars appealed to their sense of humor.
“Judith—this is the gentlemen’s smoking room,” Jane breathed, trying
hard to drag the still drowsy girl to her feet. “How ever did you get
in here?”
By this time Judith realized something was wrong. She gathered the
folds of her Burgundy robe tight around her, and tried to inflict a
severe look on the giggling porters.
“You sure did hol’ de fort, Miss,” Ferd insisted on saying. “The
gent-men had to go without their smoke this morning.”
Too embarrassed for further conversation the girls stole out of the
usurped room. Just at the little turn in the aisle, the very narrow
place where a crowd is always trying to squeeze by at once, they
encountered a group of would-be smokers ready to defend their rights.
They were talking none too meekly, and seeing the girl still in
negligee one had the poor taste to remark: “There she is. Some
sleeper!”
Judith blushed to the roots of her dark hair, but Jane glanced at the
bounder defiantly. Didn’t he have manners enough to respect a girl who
was just absent minded?
“A good thing they had to—fast a little,” Jane whispered in Judith’s
ear. “It won’t hurt them any. They smoke enough now to fumigate the car
with the fumes they carry out of that room. Pretty room, isn’t it?” She
smiled to give back Judith’s assurance.
“Oh, I am so embarrassed,” murmured Judith. “And have I actually been
sleeping there, and keeping that raft of men outside?”
“Oh, yes, dear, but that is nothing to worry about,” the kind-hearted
Jane protested. “In war times they had to go without smoking or should
have. Now they can’t seem to live a moment on the train, without the
company of their cigars. Do let us hurry in to breakfast!”
But even the reliable good nature and love of humor, characteristic of
Judith was some time in returning to the very much embarrassed girl.