Jane Allen: Center Part 7

"I can't locate my friend," she began. "Have you seen her?"

"Say, Alf," interrupted another member of the working force coming up from the next car. "I got a-what do you call a sonomballist? The sort that plays baseball in a sound sleep," the black-faced man grinned. "I got a strange lady in a strange place, and she belongs in your car. You got to extract her."

"What-what you-all mean, Ferd?" asked Alf, while Jane waited apprehensively.

"You come along wiff me and I'll demonstrate," proposed Ferd, otherwise Ferdinand. "I'se been argufying wiff de lady, didn't like to shake her zactly. But she don't pear to want to come back to you, Alf. She has took a notion to me." He grinned and chuckled in the good nature characteristic of the well-trained Pullman porter.

Jane listened with increasing anxiety. It might really be Judith, but where was she?

"What you asked for, please?" Alfred inquired of Jane. "Ferdinand has no 'cuse to interrupt," he apologized.

"Oh, that was all right," Jane quickly a.s.sured him. "I wonder if he may have found my-friend?"

"Not likely a young lady," said Alfred with a strong emphasis on _young_. As if an _old_ lady might be suspected of anything queer, but that a young miss would a.s.suredly hardly be so careless.

"But my friend is very absent minded." Jane prepared him. "She does queer things through forgetfulness."

"Can you come right now?" insisted the waiting Ferd to Jane's porter.

"I'se got to get rid of this-lady somehow."

"I'll go too, if I may?" timidly inquired Jane. "I have lost a friend"

(this to Ferd). "She is very absent minded."

"Laikly she is my-discovery," ventured the colored man striving to be polite and finding it difficult to treat the situation seriously. "Come right along."

At the other end of the car Jane stood stock still, as she read the sign "Gentlemen Smoking." But Ferd promptly a.s.sured her.

"Not a soul in here but the lady. Not a man could get in, and there was some kicking. All right for ladies to smoke. Lots of 'em do, but they has to have their own private quarters." He was opening the door of the smoking room with that caution usually displayed if a cat is expected to jump. Jane followed, and once within the room she sprang to the curled up figure, sleeping peacefully, in the big cushioned chair. It was Judith!

"Judith!" Jane called. "Judy, wake up! Come!"

The unconscious girl slowly-too slowly, came back to the realm of directed thought. She was awake at last.

"Why-Jane-" she drawled. "What's the fuss? I was dreaming about wonderful cigars."

Both porters stepped back respectfully-or to laugh safely. Dreaming of cigars appealed to their sense of humor.

"Judith-this is the gentlemen's smoking room," Jane breathed, trying hard to drag the still drowsy girl to her feet. "How ever did you get in here?"

By this time Judith realized something was wrong. She gathered the folds of her Burgundy robe tight around her, and tried to inflict a severe look on the giggling porters.

"You sure did hol' de fort, Miss," Ferd insisted on saying. "The gent-men had to go without their smoke this morning."

Too embarra.s.sed for further conversation the girls stole out of the usurped room. Just at the little turn in the aisle, the very narrow place where a crowd is always trying to squeeze by at once, they encountered a group of would-be smokers ready to defend their rights.

They were talking none too meekly, and seeing the girl still in negligee one had the poor taste to remark: "There she is. Some sleeper!"

Judith blushed to the roots of her dark hair, but Jane glanced at the bounder defiantly. Didn't he have manners enough to respect a girl who was just absent minded?

"A good thing they had to-fast a little," Jane whispered in Judith's ear. "It won't hurt them any. They smoke enough now to fumigate the car with the fumes they carry out of that room. Pretty room, isn't it?" She smiled to give back Judith's a.s.surance.

"Oh, I am so embarra.s.sed," murmured Judith. "And have I actually been sleeping there, and keeping that raft of men outside?"

"Oh, yes, dear, but that is nothing to worry about," the kind-hearted Jane protested. "In war times they had to go without smoking or should have. Now they can't seem to live a moment on the train, without the company of their cigars. Do let us hurry in to breakfast!"

But even the reliable good nature and love of humor, characteristic of Judith was some time in returning to the very much embarra.s.sed girl.

CHAPTER VIII-NEW YORK AT LAST

"If there is one thing I like more than all the other things about a long railway journey," said Judith, as they alighted at the great Metropolis terminal, "it is the end. I love to get off."

"I rather agree with you," Jane almost sighed, for the trip from Montana, while pleasantly varied with incidents of interest, was really all tuned and keyed up to the actual pleasure of reaching New York.

"How good it is to be back, after all," pursued Judith. "I hope we will have no trouble in finding Mrs. Weatherbee. She is so eminently systematic, as our train was on time, she ought to be in sight now."

"Oh, I am sure she will be here," Jane added, as they edged along with the throng, threading their way out into the open s.p.a.ce under the great gla.s.s canopy of the New York Central. The magnitude of the building seemed to dwarf the lines and group of persons, filing in and out, and coming and going-as the old man said, like people without any homes.

"There she is!" exclaimed Jane as she caught sight of the dignified Mrs. Weatherbee, director of Wellington. "And she has a young girl with her."

"Our Helka!" exclaimed Judith, jamming into a haughty woman with the perpetual poodle under her arm. "Oh, I am sure that is our little artist," as the slight young girl, in very dark costume advanced with Mrs. Weatherbee.

There was no time for a reply from Jane, for the smiling Wellington lady and her companion now caught sight of the girls, and were advancing quickly.

"Just in time," Mrs. Weatherbee exclaimed with more precision than originality. "How splendidly you both look!"

Then the usual hand shaking, and exchange of courtesies included the introduction to Miss Helka Podonsky.

So the girls at last beheld the object of their long outstanding guesses and conjectures!

Yes, Helka was pretty-she was different, and she was surely attractive.

Her hair tangled around her ears and made the most adorable little puffs. Its shade was dark, not black, but more dark than brown. All of these details were easily observed, and the girls absorbed them, but the color of her eyes-Jane thought they blue, Judith thought them brown, and neither knew how to cla.s.sify the flashes and "volts" the little stranger shot out from under the long curly lashes. But that she was lovely each silently agreed.

"This is our friend who is coming with us to Wellington," Mrs.

Weatherbee explained, in that formal way "the faculty" always take to say unnecessary things. "She is delighted with the prospect," another superfluous ba.n.a.lity.

"Oh, yes, it will be very-nice," spoke Helka, and her accent betrayed the slightest foreign tinge. Her words seemed carefully chosen, but she did not hiss her "s" nor choke her "e." Jane was glad the voice and accent would not excite undue prejudice.

"I am sure it will be perfectly jolly," Judith hurried to add, and in her effort to speak clearly she chose the very word a stranger might not understand. "Jolly" was not included in the usual English phrases given in foreign school text books.

"Yes?" Helka ventured to answer, and her rising inflection might easily span a sea of doubt.

"Oh, it will be-delightful," Jane took great pains to qualify. She had no intention of confusing Helka, and wished above all things to impress her with a sense of companionship.

Yet there was a certain strain apparent. Helka did not "fall on her knees, or neck" after the manner of the proteges in children's books, neither did "her eyes fill with tears of silent appreciation."

Nevertheless the three girls, with their college director, were going through that process of self consciousness bordering on embarra.s.sment.