ON THE WAY
All the girls' friends came to see them off at the station that fifth of
July.
"Mercy! it would never do to spring our Texas yell to-day," chuckled
Tilly, eyeing the assembled crowd; "but wouldn't I like to, though!"
"There's nothing dead about Sunbridge now, sure," laughed Genevieve.
"I should say not," declared Harold Day, who had begged the privilege of
going to Boston to see them aboard their train for Washington.
"For you see," he had argued, "it's to my state, after all, that you are
going, so I ought to be allowed to do the honors at this end of the trip
as long as I can't at the other!"
They were off at last, Mrs. Kennedy, Mr. Hartley, the six girls, and
Harold. But what a scrambling it was, and what a confusion of chatter,
laughter, "good-byes," and "write soons"!
In Boston there was a thirty-minute wait in the South Station before
their train was due to leave; but long before the thirty minutes were
over, the usually serene face of Mrs. Kennedy began to look flushed and
worried.
"Genevieve, my dear," she expostulated at last, "can't you keep those
flutterbudget girls somewhere near together? It will be time, soon, to
take our train, and only Cordelia is in sight. Not even Harold and your
father are here!"
Genevieve laughed soothingly.
"I know, Aunt Julia; but they'll be here, I'm sure. There's still lots
of time," she added, glancing proudly at her pretty new watch.
"But where are they all?"
"Tilly and Elsie have gone for some soda water, and Bertha for a
sandwich at the lunch counter. She said she just couldn't eat a thing
before she left home. Alma Lane has gone to a drug store across the
street. I don't know where father and Harold are. They went off
together, and--oh, here they are!" she broke off in relief, as the two
wanderers appeared.
"And now," summoned Mr. Hartley, "we'll be off to our car! Why, where
are the rest of us?"
"Well, they--they aren't all here," frowned Genevieve, a little
anxiously.
As at Sunbridge, it was a rush and a scramble at the last. Tilly, Elsie,
and Bertha came back, but Genevieve went to look for Alma Lane; and when
Alma returned without having seen Genevieve, Harold had to run
post-haste for her.
"Sure, dearie," said Mr. Hartley to his daughter, laughingly, when at
last he had his charges all in the car, "this is a little worse than
trying to corral a bunch of bronchos!"
"Oh, but we won't be so bad again," promised the girl, waving her hand
to Harold, who stood alone outside the window, watching them a little
wistfully.
They had a merry time getting settled, and more than one tired
countenance in the car brightened at sight of the six eager young faces.
"I couldn't get all five sections together," frowned Mr. Hartley. "I got
three here, but the other two are down near the end of the car--you know
the porter showed you. Do you think we can make them go, some way?" he
questioned Mrs. Kennedy, anxiously. "I planned for you to have one of
the sections down there by yourself, perhaps, with two of the young
ladies in the other. Will that do?"
"Of course it will--and finely, too," declared the lady. "Genevieve, you
and I will go down there and take one of the girls with us--perhaps
Bertha. That will leave your father for one up here, Elsie and Alma for
another, and Tilly and Cordelia for the third."
"I knew she'd put you with Cordelia," chuckled Bertha to Tilly, under
cover of their scramble to pick out their suit-cases from the pile in
which the porter had left them. "And I'm sure you ought to be," she
laughed. "There'll be some hopes then that you'll be kept in order!"
"Just look to yourself," retorted Tilly, serenely. "Mrs. Kennedy put
_you_ down there near _her_--remember that!"
"I declare, I felt just like an orange," giggled Elsie, "with all that
talk about 'sections.'"
"I don't see where the shelves are," whispered Cordelia, craning her
short little neck to its full extent.
"You'll see them all right," promised Tilly. "Just wait till it's dark,
then--'The goblins'll get ye if ye don't watch out!'" she quoted, with
mock impressiveness.
"I feel as if I were ten years old, and playing house," chirped Alma
Lane, as she happily frowned over just the proper place for her bag.
"I feel as if it were all a dream, and that I shall wake up right at
home," breathed Cordelia. "Seems as if it just couldn't be true--that
we're really going to Texas! Oh, Genevieve, we can't ever thank you and
your father enough," she finished, as Genevieve came up the aisle.
"As if we wanted thanks, after what you've done for me!" cried
Genevieve. "Besides, you girls can't be half so glad to go as I am to
have you!"
Some time later the porter began to make up the berths.
Tilly nudged Cordelia violently.
"There's shelf number one, Cordy. How do you think you'll like it?" she
asked.
Cordelia was too absorbed even to notice the hated "Cordy." With
wide-eyed, breathless interest she was watching the porter.
"I think--it's the most wonderful thing--I ever saw," she breathed in an
awestruck voice.
It was after the car was quiet that night that Genevieve, in her upper
berth, pulled apart the heavy curtains and peeped out into the long
narrow aisle between the swaying draperies.
The train was moving very rapidly. The air was heavy and close. The
night was an uncomfortably warm one. Genevieve had been too excited to
sleep. Even yet it did not seem quite real--that the Happy Hexagons were
all there with her, and that they were going to her far-away Texas home.
With a sigh the girl fell back on her pillow, and tried to coax sleep to
come to her. But sleep refused to come. Instead, the whole panorama of
her Eastern winter unrolled itself before her, peopled with little fairy
sprites, who danced with twinkling feet and smiled at her mockingly.
"Oh, yes, I know you," murmured Genevieve, drowsily. "I know you all.
You--you little black one--you're the cake I forgot in the oven, and let
burn up. And you're the lessons I didn't learn--there are heaps of you!
And you--you're those horrid scales I never could catch up with. My,
how you run now! And you--you little shamed one over in the
corner--you're the prank I played on Miss Jane.... Oh, you can dance
now--but you won't, by and by! Next year there won't be any of you--not
a one left. I'm going to be so good, so awfully good; and I'm not going
to ever forget, or to cause anybody any trouble, or--"
With a start Genevieve sat erect in her berth, fully awake.
"Mercy! What a jounce that was!" she cried, just above her breath. "But
we seem to be going all right now."
Cautiously she parted her curtains and peeped out again. The next
instant she almost gave a little shriek: she was looking straight into
Bertha Brown's upraised, startled eyes, just below her.
"Was that an accident?" chattered Bertha. "I told you there'd be one!
I'm all dressed, anyhow--if 'tis!"
"Sh-h! No, goosey," chuckled Genevieve.
She would have said more but, at that moment, from up the aisle sounded
a sibilant "S-s-s-s!" They turned to see a somewhat untidy fluff of red
hair above a laughing, piquant face.
"It's Tilly! She's motioning to us. Say, let's go," whispered Genevieve.
And cautiously she began to let herself down from her perch.
The next moment Bertha, fully dressed, and Genevieve in her long, dark
blue kimono, were tripping softly up the aisle.
"Why, you're both down here," exulted Genevieve, as she climbed into the
lower berth.
"Yes; Cordelia was afraid," giggled Tilly, "so I came down."
"Tilly!--I was not," disputed Cordelia, in an indignant whisper. "You
came of your own accord."
"Pooh! Tilly's fooling, and we know it," soothed Bertha, climbing into
the berth after Genevieve.
"Why, Bertha Brown, you've got your shoes on!" gasped Tilly, forgetting
to whisper.
"Of course I have," retorted Bertha. "Do you suppose--sh!"
There was a tug at the curtains, and Elsie Martin's round, good-natured
face peered in.
"Well, I like this," she bridled. "A special meeting of the Hexagon
Club, and me not notified! I heard Genevieve and Bertha giggling in the
aisle. Are you all here?"
"All but Alma," rejoined Tilly, in an exultant whisper. "Say, get her,
too!"
"Well, now, if this isn't just a lark," crowed Bertha, gleefully, when
the last of the six girls had crowded themselves into the narrow berth.
"Ouch! my head," groaned Genevieve, as a soft thud threw the other girls
into stifled laughter.
"Pooh! I've been hitting my head against the up-stairs flat ever since I
went to bed," quoth Elsie. "Isn't it fun! Now let's talk."
"What about?"
"Texas, of course," cut in Tilly. "Girls, girls, wouldn't it be glorious
to give our Texas yell, though, and see what happened!"
"Tilly!" gasped the shocked Cordelia.
"Oh, I wasn't going to, of course," chuckled Tilly, softly. "I was just
imaginin', you know."
"But even this--I'm not sure we ought--" began Cordelia.
"No, of course not; you never are, Cordy," agreed Tilly, smoothly.
"But let's talk Texas--we can whisper, you know. Tell us about Texas,
Genevieve," cut in pacifier Alma, hurriedly. "What's it like--the
ranch?"
Genevieve drew a happy sigh.
"Why, it's like--it's like nothing in Texas, we think," she breathed.
"Of course we don't think any other ranch could come up to the Six
Star!"
Tilly gave a sudden cry.
"The what?"
"The Six Star--our ranch, you know."
"You mean it's named the 'Six Star Ranch'?" demanded Tilly.
"Sure! Didn't I ever tell you?" retorted Genevieve in plain surprise.
Tilly clapped her hands softly.
"_Did_ you! Well, I should say not! You've always called it just 'the
ranch.' And now--why, girls, don't you see?--it's _our_ ranch. It
couldn't have had a better name if we'd had it built to order. It's the
Six Star Ranch--and we're the six star girls--the Happy Hexagons. And to
think we never knew it before!"
There was a chorus of half-stifled exclamations of delight; then
Cordelia demanded anxiously:
"But, Genevieve, will they be glad to see us, really--all your people
out there?"
"Glad! I reckon they will be," averred Genevieve, warmly. "The boys will
give us a rousing welcome, and there won't be anything too good for Mr.
Tim and Mammy Lindy to do."
"Who are they?" asked Tilly.
"Mr. Tim is the ranch foreman, 'the boss,' the boys call him. He's been
with us ever since I can remember, and he's so good to me! Mammy Lindy
is--well, Mammy Lindy is a dear! You'll love Ol' Mammy. She's been just
a mother to me ever since my own mother died eight years ago."
Genevieve's voice faltered a little, then went on more firmly. "She's a
negro woman, you know. Her people were slaves, once."
"And--the--boys?" asked Cordelia, dubiously. "Are they your--brothers,
Genevieve?"
Genevieve laughed--a little more loudly than perhaps she realized.
"Brothers!--well, hardly! The boys are the cowboys--on the ranch, you
know. My, but they'll give us a welcome! I reckon they'll ride into town
to give it, too, in all their war paint. Just you wait till you see the
boys--and hear them!" And Genevieve laughed again.
All in the dark Cordelia looked distinctly shocked; but, being in the
dark, nobody noticed it.
"Well, I for one just can't wait," began Tilly, hugging herself with her
arms about her knees. "Only think, it'll be whole days _now_ before we
get there, and--"
"Young ladies!"
Tilly stopped with a little cry of dismay. A man's voice had spoken
close to her ear.
"Young ladies," came the mellow tones again. "I begs yo' pardon, but de
lady what belongs down in number ten says maybe you done forgot dat dis
am a _sleepin'_ car."
"Aunt Julia!" breathed Genevieve. "She's number ten."
"She sent the porter," gasped Cordelia. "How--how awful!--and you're in
my house, too," she almost sobbed.
"Now I know we're playing house," tittered Alma Lane, hysterically, as
she followed Genevieve out of the berth.
Once more in her own quarters, Genevieve lay back on her pillow with a
remorseful sigh.
"I don't see why it's so much easier to _say_ you'll never give anybody
any trouble than 'tis to _do_ it," she lamented, as she turned over with
a jerk.
The girls began the "Chronicles of the Hexagon Club" the next morning.
Genevieve made the first entry. She dwelt at some length on the
confusion of the train-taking, both at Sunbridge and Boston. She also
had something to say of Tilly Mack. She gave a full account, too, of the
midnight session of the Hexagon Club in Cordelia's berth.
"And I'm ashamed that Aunt Julia had to be ashamed of me so soon," she
wrote contritely.
Cordelia Wilson had agreed to make the second entry in the book; but the
heat, the loss of sleep, and the strangeness and excitement added to her
distress that "her house" should have been made to seem a disgrace in
the eyes of the whole car, all conspired to make her feel so ill that
she declared she could not think of writing for a day or two.
"Very well, then, you sha'n't write; we'll hand the book to Tilly," said
Genevieve, "and then we'll give it to some of the others. But I'll tell
you what we will do, Cordelia; you shall make the last entry in the book
just before we leave the train at Bolo. And you can make it a sort of
retrospect--a 'review lesson' of the whole, you know."
"But I thought the others--won't they each tell their day?"
"That's _just_ what they'll tell--their day," retorted Genevieve,
whimsically. "You _know_ what most of them are. Alma Lane would be all
right, and would give a true description of everything; only she would
go into particulars so, that she would tell everything she saw from the
windows, and just what she had to eat all day, down to the last olive."
"I know," nodded Cordelia, with a faint smile.
"As for Tilly--you can't get real sense, of course, from her part. If
there's any nonsense going, Tilly Mack will find it and trot it out.
Bertha Brown will take up the most of her space by saying 'I always said
that--' etc., etc. Bertha is a dear--but you know she does just love to
say 'I told you so.' Elsie will write clothes, of course. We shall find
out what everybody has on when Elsie writes."
Cordelia laughed aloud--then clapped her hand to her aching head.
"You poor dear! What a shame," sympathized Genevieve. "But, Cordelia,
why does Elsie think so much of clothes? Mercy! for my part I think
they're the most tiresome sort of things to bother with; and it's such a
waste of time to be having to change your dress always!"
Cordelia smiled; then her face sobered.
"Poor Elsie! I'm sorry for Elsie. She does have such an unhappy time
over clothes."
"Why? How?--or isn't it fair to tell?" added Genevieve, with quick
loyalty.
"Oh, yes, it's fair. Everybody knows it, 'most, and I supposed you did.
Elsie herself tells of it. You know she lives with her aunt, Mrs. Gale.
Well, Mrs. Gale has three daughters, Fannie, about twenty-one, I guess,
and the twins, nineteen; and she just loves to make over their things
for Elsie--so she does it."
"Are they so very--poor, then?"
"Oh, no; they aren't poor at all. I don't think she really has to do it.
Aunt Mary says she's just naturally thrifty, and that she loves to make
them over. But you see, poor Elsie almost never has a new dress--of new
material, I mean. Now Elsie loves red; but Fannie wears blue a lot, and
the twins like queer shades like faded-out greens and browns which Elsie
abhors. Poor Elsie--no wonder she's always looking at clothes!"
"Hm-m; no wonder," nodded Genevieve, her pitying eyes on Elsie far down
the aisle--Elsie, who, in a mustard-colored striped skirt and pongee
blouse, was at that moment trying to perk up the loppy blue bows on a
somewhat faded tan straw hat. "Well, anyhow," added Genevieve, with a
sigh, "just remember, Cordelia, that you're to do the last day of the
trip in the Chronicles. Now lie down and give your poor head a rest."
* * * * *
Long before the last day of the journey came, Cordelia had quite
recovered from her headache; but, in accordance with Genevieve's plan,
she did not add her share to the Chronicles until the appointed time.
Then, with almost a reverent air, she accepted the book and pen from
Genevieve's hands, and returned to the seclusion of her seat, rejoicing
that Tilly was playing checkers with Bertha, and so would not,
presumably, disturb her--for a time, at least.
"To-day, at noon, we are to arrive at Bolo," she wrote a little
unevenly; then with a firmer hand she went on. "Genevieve says this
ought to be a retrospect, and touch lightly upon the whole trip; so I
will try to make it so.
"It has been a beautiful journey. Nothing serious has happened, though
Bertha has worn her shoes all the time expecting it. The best thing, so
far, was our lovely day in Washington that Mr. Hartley gave us, and the
President. (I mean, we saw him and he smiled.) And the worst thing
(except that first night in my berth that Genevieve wrote of) was the
time we lost Tilly for three whole hours, and Mrs. Kennedy got so
nervous and white and frightened. We supposed, of course, she had fallen
off, or jumped off, or got left off at some station. But just as we
were talking with the porter about telegraphing everywhere, she danced
in with two very untidy, unclean little Armenian children. It seems she
had been in the emigrant car all the time playing with the children and
trying to make the men and women talk their queer English. I never knew
that gentle Mrs. Kennedy could speak so sharply as she did then to
Tilly.
"And now--since Tuesday, some time--we have really been in Texas. Some
things look just like Eastern things, but others are so strange and
queer. It is very hot--I mean, very warm, too. But then, we have just as
warm days in Sunbridge, I guess. The windmills look so queer--there are
such a lot of them; but they look pretty, too. Some of the towns are
very pretty, also, with their red roofs and blue barns and houses.
Genevieve says lots of them are German villages.
"In some places lots of things are growing, but in others it is all just
gray and bare-looking with nothing much growing except those queer
prairie-dog cities with the funny little creatures sitting on top of
their houses, or popping down into their holes only to turn around and
look at you out of their bright little eyes. We had a splendid chance to
see them once when our train stopped right in the middle of a prairie
for a long time. We got off and walked quite a way with Mr. Hartley. I
saw a rattlesnake, and I'm afraid I screamed. I screamed again when the
horrid thing wiggled into one of the dog houses. Mr. Hartley says they
live together sometimes, but if I were that dog he wouldn't live with
me!
"We have seen lots of cattle and goats and hogs--though Tilly says she
hasn't seen any of the latter under any gate yet. I have seen a mesquite
tree (so I have done one of my things), and it _does_ have thorns. We
are on another prairie now, and oh, how big it is, and such a lot of
grass as there is on it--just as far as you can see, grass, grass,
grass! I guess there won't be any danger of my not having plenty of that
to take home. I have seen lots of men on horseback, but I don't know
whether they were cowboys or not. They did not shoot, anyway, but some
of them did yell.
"Genevieve says cowboys are to meet us, and that probably they will come
away to Bolo in full war paint. I thought it was only Indians who
painted--except silly ladies, of course--and I was going to say so; but
Tilly was there, so I didn't like to. Of course I ought not to mind the
cowboys--if Genevieve likes them, and they are her friends; but I can't
help remembering what Mrs. Miller told me about their 'shooting up
towns' in a very dreadful way when they were angry. I hope none of the
men I want to find will turn out to be cowboys." (Here there were signs
of an attempted erasure, but the words still stood, and immediately
after them came another sentence.) "That is, I mean I should hate to
find that any friends of mine had become cowboys.
"I have just been reading over what I have written, and I am
disappointed in it. I am sure I ought to have mentioned a great many
things about which I have been silent. But there were so many things,
and they all crowded at once before me, so that I had to just touch on
the big things and the tall things--like windmills, for instance.
"We are getting nearer Bolo now, and I must stop and eat some luncheon,
Genevieve says, as we sha'n't have anything else till supper on the
ranch. Oh, I am so excited! Seems as if I couldn't draw a breath deep
enough. And the idea of trying to eat when I feel like this!"