"Yes," said Mrs. March; "she was. I am very sorry for her."
"I"m real glad Deacon Plummer and Mrs. Plummer weren"t here," said Rob.
"Why, why, Rob?" said his mother.
(Deacon and Mrs. Plummer had left the train at Quincy to spend a week with a son of theirs who lived there. They were to join the Marches later, in Denver.)
"Oh, because she"d have said: "This is--cough--cough--providential."
What does providential mean, anyhow, papa? You never say it. Does it make you cough and sneeze? Mrs. Plummer is always saying it about every thing."
Mr. and Mrs. March laughed so hard at this they could not speak for some minutes. Then Mr. March said:--
"You must not speak so, Rob;" but, before he had finished his sentence, he had to stop again, and laugh harder than before.
"Deacon and Mrs. Plummer are going to be the greatest help to us, and they are as good and kind as they can be."
"Yes, I like her crullers first-rate," said Rob. "What does providential mean, papa?"
Mr. March looked puzzled.
"I hardly know how to tell you, Rob. Mrs. Plummer means by it that G.o.d made the thing happen, whatever it is that she is speaking of, on purpose for her accommodation: that is one way of using the word.
I do not believe that doctrine: so I never use the word, because it would be understood to mean something I don"t believe in."
"I should think G.o.d"d be too busy," said Rob, as if he were thinking very hard; "he couldn"t remember everybody, could he?"
"Not in that way, I think," said Mr. March; "but in another way I think it is true that he never forgets anybody. It is something like my garden, Rob. You know I"ve got parsnips, and carrots, and beets, and potatoes,--oh! a dozen of things, all growing together. Now I never forget my garden. I know when it is time to have the corn hoed; and I know, when there hasn"t been any rain for a long time, that I must water it. But I don"t think about each particular carrot or parsnip in the bed: I could hardly count them if I tried. Yet I mean to take very good care of my garden, and never let them suffer for any thing; and if any one of my vegetables were to be thirsty, if it could speak, it ought to ask me to give it some water."
I am afraid Rob did not listen attentively to this long explanation.
He never thought of any one thing very long, as you know. And he was busy now watching all the people pour into the car. There was a little girl, only about Nelly"s age, who had to be carried on a little mattress. She could not walk. Something was the matter with her spine. Her father and mother were with her. And there was a lady with a sweet face, who was too ill to sit up at all. The sofas in her "section" were made up into a bed as soon as she came in; she had a doctor and a nurse with her.
Then there were several couples, who had two or three children with them; and one poor lady who was travelling all alone with five children, and the largest only twelve years old; and there were some Englishmen with guns and fishing-rods and spy-gla.s.ses and almost every thing you could think of that could be cased in leather and carried on a journey,--one of them even had a bath-tub, a big, round bath-tub, in addition to every thing else. He had a man-servant with him who carried all these things, or else he never could have got on at all. The man"s name was Felix. That is a Latin word which means "happy," but I don"t think this poor fellow was happy at all. He was a Frenchman. I don"t know how he came to be an Englishman"s servant, but I suppose the Englishman had lived a great while in France, and had found him there. Felix"s master always talked French with him; so Felix had not learned much English, and it would have made you laugh to see him clap his hand to his head when anybody said any thing he could not understand. He would pound his head as if he could drive the meaning in that way; and then he would pull his thin hair; and then sometimes he would turn round and round as fast as a top two or three times. When he came into the cars loaded down with the guns and the rods and the bundles and the bath-tub, his master would tell him to put them down in the corner; then the porter would come along and say:--
"Look here! you can"t have all these things in here," and then Felix would say:--
"Vat dat you say, sare?"
Then the porter would repeat it; and Felix would say again:--
"Vat dat you say, sare?"
And then the porter would get angry, and pick up some of the things, and lay them on Felix"s back, and tell him to carry them off; and there Felix would stand stock-still, with the things on his back, till his master appeared. Then he would pour out all his story of his troubles in French, and the Englishman would be very angry with the porter, and say that he would have his things where he pleased; and the porter would say he should not. He must put them under his berth or in the baggage car; and poor Felix would stand all the while looking first in the porter"s face and then in his master"s, just like a dog that is waiting for his master to tell him which way to run for a thing. Great drops of perspiration would stand on his forehead, and his face would be as red as if it were August: he was so worried and confused. Poor Felix! he was one of the drollest sights in the whole journey.
The people kept pouring in.
"Mamma, where are they all to sleep?" whispered Rob.
"I"m sure I don"t know, Rob," she answered.
At last the train moved off, and the different families arranged themselves in their own sections, and it seemed a little less crowded. But there were not seats enough for all the children, and some of them were obliged to sit on the floor in the middle of the aisle. The lady who had five children had only engaged one berth: that is half of a section.
"How do you expect to manage about sleeping?" said Mrs. March to her.
"Oh, that"s easy enough," said she. "We"ve slept so all the way from New York. I put the three little ones crosswise at the foot, and the two others lie "longside of me."
Mrs. March did not reply to this; but she thought to herself, "I"d like to see those babies after they are all packed away for the night."
At noon the train stopped for the pa.s.sengers to take their dinner at a little station. More than half the people in the car went out.
Then the porter--the new porter"s name was Ben--brought in little tables and put them up between the seats for the people who had their own lunch-baskets and did not want to go out to dinner. In the next section to the Marches were a man and his wife with three children. They had a big coffee-pot full of coffee, and one tin cup to drink it from. They had loaves of brown bread, a big cheese, and a bunch of onions. As soon as they opened their basket, the smell of the onions and the cheese filled the car.
"Ugh!" said Rob; "where does this horrible smell come from?"
Luckily the people who owned the cheese and the onions did not hear him, and before he had time to say any more, his mother whispered to him to be quiet; but Rob"s face was one of such disgust, that n.o.body could have looked at him without seeing that he was very uncomfortable. Mrs. March felt as uncomfortable as Rob did: but she knew that those people had just the same right to have cheese and onions on their table that she had to have chocolate and orange marmalade on hers; so she opened one of the windows wide to let in fresh air, and went on with her dinner. As soon as the spirit-lamp began to burn, the children in the next section exclaimed aloud: "Oh, what is that? what is that?" They had never seen any thing of the kind before. The two eldest, who were boys, jumped down from their seat, each carrying a big piece of bread and of cheese, and came crowding around Mrs. March to look at the lamp. Mrs. March was a very gentle and polite woman, but she could not help being vexed at these ill-mannered children.
"Go away, little boys," she said: "I am very busy now. I am afraid you will upset the lamp, and get burned."
Then she looked at the father and mother, hoping they would call their children back. But they took no notice of them: they went on eating their bread and cheese and onions; and, at every fresh onion they sliced, a fresh whiff of the strong, disagreeable odor went through the car. Mr. March had been out to the eating-house, to get some milk. Mrs. March had brought a big square gla.s.s bottle, which held three pints; and, whenever they stopped at an eating-house, Mr.
March bought fresh milk to fill it, and this was a great addition to their bill of fare. He came into the car at this moment, bringing the milk bottle, and as soon as he opened the car door, he exclaimed, as Rob had done:--
"Ugh!" but in a second more he saw what had made the odor, and he said no more. As he handed the milk to his wife, she said in a low tone:--
"Could we go anywhere else to eat our dinner, Robert?"
Mr. March looked all around the car and shook his head.
"No," he said; "every seat is taken, and at any moment the people may come back. It is nearly time now for the train to start. We will make a hasty meal; perhaps we can do better at night."
Rob and Nelly were very quiet. They did not like the two strange boys who stood close to their seat staring at them, and at every thing which was on the table. Rob whispered to Nelly:--
""Tain"t half so nice as it was in the little room: is it, Nell?"
"No," said Nelly.
"Shouldn"t you think they"d be ashamed to stare so?" continued Rob, making a gesture over his shoulder towards their uninvited guests.
"Yes," said Nelly. "It"s real rude."
Still the boys stood immovable at Mrs. March"s knee. At last one of them lifted his head, and, saying "What keeps that thing on there?"
pointed to the saucepan standing on the little tripod of the lamp.
Just at that moment, his brother accidentally hit his arm and made his hand go farther than he meant: it hit the saucepan and knocked it over; down went the spirit-lamp, all the alcohol ran out and took fire, and for a few minutes there was a great hubbub I a.s.sure you.
Mr. March seized their heavy woollen lap-robe, and threw it on the floor above the burning alcohol, and stamped out the flames; and n.o.body was burned. But the nice chocolate was all lost; it went running down a little muddy stream, way out to the door; and the tumbler which had the b.u.t.ter in it fell to the floor and was broken; and the nice slices of white bread which Mrs. March had just cut were all soaked in alcohol and spoiled; and altogether it was a wretched mess, and all because two little boys had not been taught how to behave properly. They ran off as hard as they could go, you may be sure, back into their own seat, as soon as the mischief was done; and, if you will believe it, their father and mother never even looked round or took notice of all the confusion that was going on. They sat and munched their onions and brown bread and cheese as if they were in their own house all alone. One sees very queer and disagreeable people in travelling. By the time Mr. and Mrs. March had put out the fire, and picked up all the things and wiped up the chocolate as well as they could with a newspaper, the people who had gone out to get their dinners, all came pouring back, and the cars began to move.
"Oh, dear me!" said Mrs. March: "we shall have to go without our lunch now till tea-time. Here, children, just drink this milk, and eat a piece of bread, and at tea-time, perhaps, we"ll have better luck."
"I don"t care," said Rob; "I ain"t hungry a bit: it"s all so horrid in here."
"Neither am I," said Nelly. "Can"t we have a little room all to ourselves to-morrow, papa?"
"No, Nell," said her father: "no more little room for us on this journey; this car goes through to Denver. We can"t change. But it is only one night and one day: we can stand it."
"I"m glad part of it is night," said Nelly; "we"ll be by ourselves when we"re in bed."