Page:An American Girl in India.djvu/133

 up with a nasty, uncanny sort of feeling, to find a vague shadowy form looming close up against me. I jumped up with a cry of alarm and promptly hit my head against the upper berth, which must have been lowered while I slept, but as I fell back I made a grab at the shadowy form and caught hold of something solid. There was a faint squeak from up above, and the thing that I held wriggled horribly. I clung on tighter, only half awake and real scared. Suddenly I realised that it was a leg I had caught on to, but before I could let go the whole thing fell flop down on the floor of the carriage with a shriek like a steam whistle. Out of the darkness from the other side of the carriage came a terrified voice. 'Martha, oh, Martha, what is it? What has happened?' I jumped up, almost falling over the heap on the floor, and drew back the green baize from the nearest lamp. Then I saw one of the most comic sights I have ever seen, and in the sudden reaction from the real scare I had had, I sank back on my berth laughing hysterically, and feeling as if I should never stop. On the floor crouched a mass of grey dressing-gown with a terrified wrinkled face peeping out of it, surmounted by a grey woollen nightcap, while huddled up on the two opposite berths were two exact counterparts of the figure on the floor. At first I thought I must be dreaming and that they couldn't be real. They looked perfectly uncanny, and they were gazing at me with sort of bulgy eyes like that kitmatgar servant