"Oh, just to keep awake. After all, I find I have a yearning to stay up.
All in favor of the smoker say "Aye."" And a lone "Aye" came from Tavia.
"Besides," said Dorothy, "the porter wouldn"t permit it."
"Unless we carried something in our hands that looked like a pipe," mused Tavia.
"We might take Ned some matches," rejoined Dorothy, seeing that the subject offered a little variety.
"When the porter takes down our berths, we"ll quietly suggest it, and see how it takes," said Tavia. "Along with feeling like storming the smoker, I"m simply dying for a weeny bit of ice-cream."
"Tavia," said Dorothy, trying to speak severely, "I think you must be having a nightmare, such unreasonable desires!"
"So," yawned Tavia, "I"ll have to go to bed hungry, I suppose."
"Do you really want ice-cream as badly as that?"
"I never yearned so much for anything."
Dorothy was rather yearning for ice-cream herself, since it had been suggested, but she knew it was an utter impossibility. The dining car was closed, and how to secure it, Dorothy could not think. However, she called the porter, and, while he was taking down their berths, she and Tavia went over to say good-night to Aunt Winnie and her friend.
"I"ll try not to awaken you, girls, when I retire," said Aunt Winnie.
"Ned"s berth, by a strange coincidence, is the upper one in Mrs.
Sanderson"s section. Years ago, Mrs. Sanderson and myself occupied the same section in a Pullman for an entire week, and it was the beginning of a delightful friendship."
Mrs. Sanderson told the girls about her present trip, but Tavia was so hungry for the ice-cream, and Dorothy so busy trying to devise some means to procure it, that they missed a very interesting story from the beautiful lady.
Then, returning to their berths, Tavia climbed the ladder, and everything was quiet.
"Dorothy," she whispered, her head dangling over the side of the berth, "peep out and find the porter. I must have ice-cream."
"Why, Tavia?" asked Dorothy.
"Just because," answered Tavia in the most positive way.
Dorothy and Tavia both looked out from behind their curtains. Every other one was drawn tightly, save two, for Aunt Winnie and her friend and Ned, who had come back, were the only pa.s.sengers still out of their berths.
Ned winked at the girls when their heads appeared.
Holding up a warning finger at Ned, who faced them, the girls stole out of their section and crept silently toward the porter. In hurried whispers they consulted him, but the porter stood firm and unyielding.
They could not be served with anything after the dining car closed.
So they then descended to coaxing. Just one girl pleading for ice-cream might have been resisted, but when two sleep-eyed young creatures, begged so pitifully to be served with it at once, the porter threw up his hands and said:
"Ah"ll see if it can be got, but Ah ain"t got no right fo" to git it tho!"
Soon he reappeared with two plates of ice-cream. Tavia took one plate in both hands hungrily, and Dorothy took the other. When they looked at Aunt Winnie"s back, Ned stared, but Aunt Winnie was too deeply interested in her old friend to care what Ned was staring at.
"Duck!" cautioned Tavia, who was ahead of Dorothy, as she saw Aunt Winnie suddenly turn her head. They slipped into the folds of a nearby curtain, but sprang instantly back into the centre of the aisle. Snoring, deep and musical, sounded directly into their ears from behind the curtain, and even Tavia"s love of adventure quailed at the awful nearness of the sound. One little lurch and they would have landed in the arms of the snoring one!
Just to make the ice-cream taste better, Aunt Winnie again turned partly.
Dorothy and Tavia stood still, unable to decide whether it was wise to retreat or advance, Ned solved it for them by rising and waiting for the girls. Aunt Winnie, of course, turned all the way around and discovered the two girls hugging each other, in silent mirth.
"Tavia would have cream," explained Dorothy.
"But it would have tasted so much better had we eaten it without being found out," said Tavia, woefully.
"Just look at this," said Ned, "and maybe the flavor of the cream will be good enough," and he handed the girls a check marked in neat, small print, which the porter had handed him: "Two plates of ice-cream, at 75 cents each, $1.50."
"How outrageous!" cried Dorothy.
"We"ll return it immediately," said Tavia, indignantly.
"I paid it," explained Ned, drily. "You wanted something outside of meal hours, and you might have expected to have the price raised."
"At that cost each spoonful will taste abominable," moaned Tavia.
Said Dorothy sagely: "It won"t taste at all if we don"t eat it instantly.
It"s all but melted now."
"Yes, pray eat it," said the gruff voice of a man behind closed curtains, "so the rest of us can get to sleep."
Another voice, with a faint suggestion of stifling laughter, said: "I"m in no hurry to sleep, understand; still I engaged the berth for that purpose--"
But Dorothy and Tavia had fled, and heard no more comments. Aunt Winnie followed.
"How ridiculous to want ice-cream at such an hour, and in such a place!"
she said.
"Old melted stuff," complained Tavia, "it tastes like the nearest thing to nothing I"ve ever attempted to eat!"
"And, Auntie," giggled Dorothy, "we paid seventy-five cents per plate!
I"m drinking mine; it"s nothing but milk!"
Soon the soft breathing of Aunt Winnie denoted the fact that she had slipped silently into the land of dreams. Dorothy, too, was asleep, and Tavia alone remained wide-awake, listening to the noise of the cars as the train sped over the country. Tavia sighed. She had so much to be thankful for, she was so much happier than she deserved to be, she thought. One fact stood out clearly in her mind. Sometime, somehow, she would show Dorothy how deeply she loved and admired her, above everyone else in the world. After all, a sincere, unselfish love is the best one can give in return for unselfish kindness.
The next thing Tavia knew, although it seemed as if she had only just finished thinking how much she loved Dorothy, a tiny streak of sunlight shone across her face. She sat bolt upright, confused and mystified, in her narrow bed so near the roof. The sleepy mist left her eyes, and with a bound she landed on the edge of her berth, her feet dangling down over the side of it. The train was not moving, and peeping out of the ventilator, she saw that they were in a station, and an endless row of other trains met her gaze.
"Good morning!" she sang out to Dorothy, but the only answer was the echo of her own voice. Some few seconds pa.s.sed, and Tavia was musing on what hour of the morning it might be, when a perfectly modulated voice said: "Anything yo"-all wants, Miss?"
"Gracious, no! Oh, yes I do. What time is it?" she asked.
"Near on to seven o"clock," said the porter.
"Thank you," demurely answered Tavia, and started to dress. All went well until she climbed down the ladder for her shoes and picked up a beautifully-polished, but enormous number eleven! She looked again, Aunt Winnie"s very French heeled kid shoes and Dorothy"s stout walking boots and one of her own shoes were there, but her right shoe was gone!
She held up the number eleven boot and contemplated it severely. To be sure both her feet would have fitted snugly into the one big shoe, but that wasn"t the way Tavia had intended making her _debut_ in New York City. She looked down the aisle and saw shoes peeping from under every curtain, and some stood boldly in the aisle. The porter at the end of the car dozed again, and Tavia, the number eleven in hand, started on a still hunt for her own shoe.
She pa.s.sed several pairs of shoes, but none were hers. At the end of the car, she jumped joyfully on a pair, only to lay them down in disappointment. They were exactly like hers, but her feet had developed somewhat since her baby days, whereas the owner of these shoes still retained her baby feet, little tiny number one shoes! On she went, bending low over each pair. At last! Tavia dropped the shoe she was carrying beside its mate! At least that was some relief, she would not now have to face the owner in her shoeless condition and return to his outstretched hand his number eleven.