Page:St. Nicholas - Volume 41, Part 1.djvu/71

1913.] of four. When they went back to their seats, their finger-tips were curiously wrinkled from long immersion in the hot soap-suds, but the ache was gone out of their throats, and Libby thought it might be well for them to eat their dinner while their hands were so very clean. It was only quarter-past eleven, but it seemed to them that they had been traveling nearly a whole day.

A chill of disappointment came to Will’'m when his food was handed to him out of a pasteboard box. He had not thought to eat it in this primitive fashion. He had expected to sit at one of the little tables, but Libby did n’t know what one had to do to gain the privilege of using them. The trip was not turning out to be all he had fondly imagined. Still the lunch in the pasteboard box was not to be despised. Even disappointment could not destroy the taste of Grandma Neal’s chicken sandwiches and blackberry jam.

By the time they had eaten all they wanted, and tied up the box and washed their hands again (no bubbles and games this time, for fear of the porter), it had begun to snow, and they found entertainment in watching the flakes that swirled against the panes in all sorts of beautiful patterns. They knelt on opposite seats each against a window. Sometimes the snow seemed to come in sheets, shutting out all view of the little hamlets and farm-houses past which they whizzed with deep, warning whistles, and sometimes it lifted to give them glimpses of windows with holly wreaths hanging from scarlet bows, and eager little faces peering out at the passing train—the way theirs used to peer, years ago, it seemed, before they started on this endless journey.

It makes one sleepy to watch the snow fall for a long time. After a while, Will’'m climbed down from the window and cuddled up beside Libby again, with his soft, bobbed hair tickling her ear as he rested against her. He went to sleep so, and she put her arm around his neck again to keep him from slipping. The card with which Miss Sally had tagged him, slid along its cord and stuck up above his collar, prodding his chin. Libby pushed it back out of sight, and felt under her dress for her own. They must be kept safely, “in case something should happen.” She wondered what Miss Sally meant by that. What could happen? Their own Mr. Smiley was on the engine, and the conductor had been asked to keep an eye on them.

Then her suddenly awakened fear began to suggest answers. Maybe something might keep her father from coming to meet them. She and Will'm would n’t know what to do or where to go. They 'd be lost in a great city as the little match girl was on Christmas eve, and they ’d freeze to death on some stranger’s door-step. There was a picture of the match girl thus frozen, in the Hans Andersen book which Susie Peters kept in her desk at school. There was a cruel stepmother picture in the same book, Libby remembered, and recollections of that turned her thoughts into still deeper channels of foreboding. What would she be like? What was going to happen to her and Will'm at the end of this journey, if it ever came to an end? If only they could be back at the Junction, safe and sound—

The tears began to drip slowly. She wiped them away with the back of the hand that was farthest away from Will'm. She was miserable enough to die, but she did n’t want him to wake up and find it out.

By and by, a lady who had been quietly watching her for some time, came and sat down in the opposite seat and asked her what was the matter, and if she was crying because she was homesick, and what was her name, and how far they were going. But Libby never answered a single question. The tears just kept dripping, and her mouth working in a piteous attempt to swallow her sobs; and finally the lady saw that she was frightening her, and only making matters worse by trying to comfort her, so she went back to her seat.

When Wil'm awakened after a while and sat up, leaving Libby’s arm all stiff and prickly from being bent in one position so long, the train had been running for miles through a lonely country where nobody seemed to live. Just as he rubbed his eyes wide awake, they came to a forest of Christmas trees. At least they looked as if all they needed to make them that was for some one to fasten candles on their snow-laden boughs. Then the whistle blew the signal that meant that the train was about to stop, and Will’m scrambled up on his knees again, and they both looked out expectantly.

There was no station at this place of stopping. Only by special order from some high official did this train come to a halt here, so somebody of importance must be coming aboard. All they saw at first was a snowy road opening through the grove of Christmas trees, but standing in this road, a few rods from the train, was a sleigh drawn by two big, black horses. They had bells on their bridles which went ting-a-ling whenever they shook their heads or pawed the snow. The children could not see a trunk being put on to the baggage-car farther up the track, but they saw what happened in the delay.

VoL. XLI.-8.