“Why, that’s the place mother’s doctor spoke about,” put in Babbie. “I told him I wanted to go to little out-of-the-way villages, and he mentioned that one. How do you get there, Madeline?”
“Why, by boat, I think Mary said. Let me take your Baedeker, Betty.”
“Oh, I’m so glad she can make out trains and things,” said Babbie, with a sigh of relief. “Mother can’t and I can’t, and it’s such a bother always to have to ask the hotel people.”
Presently Madeline announced that she knew just how to go to Oban by boat, and how to come back by train, and then Marie appeared with a message from Mrs. Hildreth that it was time for the girls to come down-stairs and get their hand-baggage together.
“But we’re not within ten miles of Glasgow yet,” objected Babe, proud of her newly-acquired knowledge of the geography of the region.
“Oh, we go there from Greenock on a boat-train,” Babbie told her. “And here comes a tender or a ferry, or whatever they call it, to take us ashore.”
So there was only time to say good-bye to the funny old Scotch stewardess, who had told them to “Come awa’” to their baths every morning, to the other Harding girls, and to the senator, who gave Betty his card and made her promise to let him know when she came to Washington; and then they were chug-chugging over to the Greenock station, where Madeline instructed the novices in the art of getting one’s trunks through the customs, while Babbie established her mother comfortably on the train. Madeline had quite given up finding her trunk and was congratulating herself on having put so many things into her “carry-all,” when she heard the senator protesting volubly that his name wasn’t Ayres and that he hadn’t brought a trunk anyway, whereupon she pounced joyously on her property and refused to let it out of her sight again until it had been put aboard the Glasgow train.
Betty and Babe found the train very amusing. Instead of long cars with rows of seats on either side of the aisle, there were funny little compartments, each holding eight or ten people, half of whom were obliged to ride backward whether they liked it or not. But as this train wasn’t crowded, Mrs. Hildreth’s party had a compartment all to themselves, and Betty and Babe were free to exclaim as much as they liked over the delightful queerness of European travel. Foxgloves and chimney-pots were the two objects of greatest interest en route. Babbie discovered the foxgloves growing in a pretty little grove close by the railroad track; the chimney-pots jostled one another on the roof of every cottage they passed, and as they came into Glasgow made such an impression on Babe that she could think of nothing else and almost fell out the window in her efforts to count the most imposing clusters.
“It’s queer,” she said, leaning back wearily as the train swept into a tunnel, “how nobody ever tells you about the things you notice most. Now I’ve talked to quantities of people who’ve traveled in Europe, and not one of them ever so much as mentioned chimney-pots.”
“Well, now you can make yourself famous for your originality by mentioning them to everybody,” said Babbie consolingly. “Here we are in Glasgow. Who’s going to see about the trunks?”