The Mission of Janice Day Part 19

"'Tisn't everybody would trust me like this."

"'Tisn't everybody who knows you as well as I do, Marty. If you get stuck and can't pay me back right away, I'll let you work it out when the V. C. branch gets to running."

That was talking "man to man" and Marty's chest swelled.

"You won't be sorry for this," he a.s.sured Frank Bowman, and hurried home to supper.

So he had the money safely fastened in his inside vest pocket while he watched his cousin so oddly during the evening. When she was helping Aunt 'Mira with the dishes Marty slipped into Janice's room. He found her traveling bag in the bottom of her closet, packed as he suspected.

"Hi tunket! isn't she a plucky girl?" Marty told himself. "I'm just proud to be her cousin, so I am! We'll have some time down there among the greasers, believe me!"

Marty owned a shotgun and he was tempted to take it along. But he thought better of that. He could not very well hide it while traveling on the train.

"B'sides I reckon rifles, or these here automatics, are more fashionable down there on the Border," the boy ruminated.

Bedtime came and he, like Janice, was too excited to sleep. He was afraid he might sleep, however, and, knowing his failing, he determined to arrange matters so that he could not possibly miss the boat in the morning.

Putting a pair of clean socks and an extra handkerchief in one jacket pocket, and a clean collar in another (for Marty believed in traveling light), he climbed out over the shed roof before midnight and carefully descended to the ground by the grape arbor route. Making his way to the wharf he curled up on some bags in front of the freight-house door.

n.o.body could unlock and open that door without disturbing him; but the chill morning air awoke him in plenty of season.

When the steamboat b.u.mped into the dock Marty was right at hand to catch the bow hawser. It was still dark and he slipped aboard without being noticed.

The _Constance Colfax_ boasted no staterooms; but the few all-night pa.s.sengers from up the lake were sprawled about the unventilated cabin in a somnolent state. Marty only peeped in at them, and then ensconced himself on deck where he could watch the gangplank.

He saw his cousin in her heavy veil come aboard. She, too, preferred to remain on deck, cold as it was, to going into the stuffy cabin. Janice was warmly dressed and the morning was clear. When the _Constance Colfax_ got under way again she watched the few twinkling lights of Polktown and the stars overhead fade out as the sky grew rosy above the mountain tops.

The boat was well out of the cove when the sun came up. A brisk wind whipped up the whitecaps. Sheltered in the lee of the little deckhouse, Janice was left to herself and to her thoughts save when the purser came around for her fare.

"Didn't take on no crowd at Polktown, Miss," he observed genially. "Only you and three more."

Janice had noticed only the two traveling salesmen; but she made no comment. She did not suppose she was in the least interested in that fourth pa.s.senger whom she had not seen.

At last they reached the Landing. The railroad here was only a branch line and the cars were old-fashioned and uncomfortable. She could get no good accommodations to Albany she well knew, so she bought a ticket only as far as that city.

Had she intended going south and west by way of New York she would have been obliged to make some arrangement to get over to Middletown to take the train there. This might have caused comment. Besides, from what Frank Bowman had said, she believed she could save both time and money by taking the Great Lakes route.

There were three day coaches in the little train already made up at the Landing. Janice chose a seat in the middle coach without any idea that somebody in whom she would have been very much interested stole into the rear car before the train started.

Marty dared not go to the ticket office, for fear his cousin might look out of the car-window and see him. But he was quite sure Janice was bound for Albany first, and he paid his fare to that point when the conducter came through.

It was a tiring ride, with stops at "everybody's barnyard gate," and the coaches filled up and were half emptied again two or three times during the journey. Janice had made no preparation for luncheon and once when the train halted at a junction "ten minutes for refreshments" as the brakeman bawled it out, she could find nothing in the bare and dirty lunchroom fit to eat or drink.

When she returned, hopeless and hungry, to her seat there was a neatly wrapped s...o...b..x lying on the dusty plush cushion.

"Why! whose is this?" she involuntarily asked aloud.

"Isn't it for you, my dear?" asked a woman who occupied the seat directly behind hers and to whom Janice had already spoken.

The girl picked up the package and read scrawled upon it in an entirely unfamiliar handwriting: "Miss Janice Day."

"Oh! it has my name on it," Janice admitted. "But I don't know a thing about it." She was rather frightened. Somebody had recognized her.

Somebody knew she had run away and must be watching and following her.

"Who--who put it here?" she asked the woman in the next seat.

"Why, you are actually pale, child!" laughed the matron, who had her own well filled lunch basket open in her lap. "You don't suppose it is an infernal machine? It looks like a box of lunch to me."

"Yes, I know," said Janice faintly. "But I can't imagine who could have left it here for me. It has my name on it."

"A brakeman left it," explained the woman. "Leastwise it was a man with a railroad cap on. Open it. I should not question the goods the G.o.ds provide. You found nothing fit to eat in that station, I am sure."

The train was already moving on. Janice sat down and opened the package.

There was first of all a thermos bottle filled with hot tea. There were ham sandwiches--more satisfying as to thickness than delicacy, perhaps--a slab of plum cake and several solid looking doughnuts with a piece of creamy cheese.

It was more like a workman's lunch than one put up to tempt the appet.i.te of a traveler; but Janice was hungry and she finally ate every crumb of it.

She examined the thermos bottle very carefully, searching for some mark upon it that might reveal the ident.i.ty of the owner. Why! she could not even return the bottle, and it must have cost almost a dollar. She remembered that Marty had sent off to a catalog house for one like this and it had cost him eighty-five cents.

After she had eaten the hearty luncheon she went back and spoke to the brakeman. But he denied knowing anything about the package or having placed it in her seat. The forward brakeman made a similar statement.

She even asked the conductor about it with the same result.

"I certainly would not worry about it, my dear," the comfortable matron behind Janice said. "Some friend of yours has played a joke upon you--and a very kind joke, I call it."

"Yes. But _who_?" murmured Janice Day, feeling much worried indeed.

"Somebody got aboard at that station to deliver the box and you were out of your seat----"

"But how did he know it was my seat?" demanded Janice.

"Saw you through the window as the train stopped," suggested the friendly woman. "Of course, I only _thought_ it was the brakeman who brought it. I did not really pay attention."

This explanation did not go far enough to relieve Janice's mind. She could not imagine who had planned the surprise. n.o.body, she felt sure, knew she was leaving Polktown but Mr. Cross Moore. And surely _he_ would not do a thoughtful thing like this.

It was a mystery bound to trouble her a great deal. She did not know who might bob up before her at almost any place and try to make her go back to her uncle and aunt.

The girl was determined to withstand this demand, no matter who made it.

If Uncle Jason himself had followed her Janice Day was sure she should keep right on in her intent. Or Nelson----

"It can't be Nelson. He couldn't leave his school for even a day," the girl thought. "And he surely did not believe I meant to go when I saw him last evening, or he would not have taken what I said so coolly. Who could it be?"

Not for a moment did Janice suspect the truth. She had no idea that a familiar, boyish figure sat in a rear seat of the rear coach, his hat pulled well down over his eyes, eating from a box of lunch similar to that she had found in her seat. That is, lacking nothing but the bottle of tea. Marty owned only one thermos bottle. He had wheedled the cook on board the _Constance Colfax_ to put up the two lunches for him; but he washed his own down with water from the tank at the end of the car.

Marty was already beginning what he considered to be his necessary oversight of Janice on this journey. He was quite sure a girl who did not think of lunch was not fit to travel alone!

CHAPTER XIV