IN A THIRD-CLASS CARRIAGE.
Three girls were traveling in a third-class carriage to King’s Cross.
The train was not an express; it stopped at nearly every station. The
carriage in which they sat was more or less crowded with country people
who carried baskets, babies, feeding-bottles, and all sorts of parcels.
The girls, looking bright and energetic, occupied corner seats. A woman
with a fretful baby on her knee sat near one.
“How tired you must be!” said this girl. “Do let me hold your baby for a
little.”
As she spoke all the other passengers turned and stared at her. She was
a tall, slim, very plainly-dressed girl; her dark-blue serge dress
lacked freshness, her sailor hat was decidedly the worse for wear, and
her gloves had been mended in many places. The woman whom the girl
addressed, glancing first at the shabby clothes, then at the kind,
bright, handsome young face, decided that the girl was not very much
above herself in the social scale, and agreed to let her hold her baby
for a bit.
A charming color came into the girl’s face as she received the small
atom of humanity on her knee. She held the baby tenderly; her young arms
were strong, the little one nestled down comfortably, and the mother
gave her a glance of admiration.
“Why, I do declare, my dear,” she exclaimed, “one would think you had
half-a-dozen of your own, you handle the little mite that knowingly!”
“Oh, it is because I love children,” replied the girl. “It is kind of
you to let me hold your little one. Look, Marjorie, do look; hasn’t it
pretty little fingers; and oh, do see its tiny toes!”
Another tall girl bent forward and began to examine the baby’s feet.
They were pink and very small; the girl stretched out her palm, and the
other girl placed the little foot upon it.
“You are not to take the little dear from me,” said the first girl.
“Oh, my dear Eileen, I would not deprive you of the little treasure for
the world,” was the quick reply. “I know by your face you are in the
seventh heaven.”
“I am, I am,” replied the girl addressed as Eileen. “Oh, what a darling!
It is so delicious, Marjorie, when it nestles up against you.”
The train slackened speed, drew up at a great station, and the woman,
the baby, and most of the other passengers got out. The three girls now
found themselves alone in the carriage. The girl at the distant window,
the smallest of the three, turned and eagerly faced her companions.
“Well, Eileen,” she began—she shook her finger in the face of the
bright, tall girl as she spoke—“if you begin that sort of thing just on
the very day when you have left school, if you will insist on wearing
those disgracefully shabby clothes, going third-class and taking us with
you, when your mother sends us money to travel first, and finally
adopting strange babies who happen to be traveling in the same carriage,
you will certainly break Aunt Helen’s heart.”
Eileen shrugged her shoulders.
“Not at all,” she answered. “Mother may not like it at first, but she
will soon learn to know once for all that Marjorie and I mean to follow
our own bent. Marjorie and I do not intend to wear gay clothes, because
we consider finery a sheer waste of money; but as to you, Lettie, it is
the greatest pity you are not mother’s own daughter. How exquisitely
neat, how smart, you look!”
“Not smart at all, only suitably dressed,” replied Letitia, bridling a
little.
She was wearing a very correct traveling costume of dark gray; her
bright wavy hair was arranged in the latest and most fashionable manner;
little curls and bits of fluffy downy brightness would get out of their
confinement and dance round her small, soft face. She was wearing the
universal coat and skirt; but a light-blue cambric shirt and a white
sailor hat with a broad white ribbon gave distinction to her costume.
Her gloves were also white, and her little shoes had smart bows and
buckles.
“My dress is only suitable,” she repeated. “Now, your dress, Eileen, is
not suitable; nor is yours, Marjorie. To wear what is not suitable is
the height of vulgarity.”
“Oh, do listen to her,” said Marjorie, bursting into a hearty laugh.
“She is trying to scare us with those old bogy words, as if we minded.
Think what it all means, Lettie, before you condemn us so severely.
Mother’s money is safe in my purse instead of on my person, and the
difference between third and first class means a considerable addition
also to my nice, heavy little purse. Who knows in what class we are
coming up to town? Who cares to know? Mother is certain not to meet us
at King’s Cross, and old Fowler will not see what class we alight from.”
“I am glad Aunt Helen has secured Fowler as her coachman,” said Letitia.
“But, all the same,” she added hastily, “you both do look disgracefully
shabby.”
“Well, Lettie,” said Marjorie, “I don’t feel shabby, which is the main
thing. What can be the matter with this serviceable dress? It is very
strong and won’t tear, and is the sort which does not crumple much.”
“It is all over grease,” replied Letitia; “spots of grease here, there,
and everywhere. And, oh, your gloves—there is absolutely a hole in the
thumb of the one on your left hand. It is too disgraceful!”
“My gloves suit my character,” replied Marjorie.
She looked at her sister; they both sat back in their seats and indulged
in hearty girlish laughter. They were very like one another; the same
dark, handsome eyes beamed out of each face, the same good arched brows,
the same hair, thick and straight, very dark in color, but cropped to
within an inch of their respective heads. They had clear, good
complexions. Plenty of color brightened each pair of healthy
cheeks—their lips were beautifully formed and they had snow-white pearly
teeth. And yet these two girls, partly because of their dress, were not
looked at twice during that journey, whereas Letitia was the cynosure of
many admiring eyes.