After dress parade a certain Major Drew, who knew Mr. Hartley, came up and was duly presented to the ladies. He in turn presented the officer of the day, who looked, to the Happy Hexagons, very handsome and imposing in sword and spurs. After this, at Major Drew's invitation, there was a visit to the officers' quarters, and on the Major's broad gallery there was a cooling refreshment of lemonade and root beer before the drive back to the hotel.
CHAPTER XVII
"BERTHA'S ACCIDENT"
It had been decided that the party would go to New Orleans from San Antonio, and then from there by boat to New York.
"It'll make a change from car-riding, and a very pleasant one, I'm thinking," Mr. Hartley had said; and the others had enthusiastically agreed with him.
It was on the five-hundred-and-seventy-two mile journey from San Antonio to New Orleans that something happened. In the Chronicles of the Hexagon Club it fell to Genevieve to tell the story; and this is what she wrote:
"It seems so strange to me that we should have traveled so many thousands of miles on the railroad without anything happening; and then, just on the last five hundred (we are going to take the boat at New Orleans)—to have it happen.
"We have had all sorts of amusing experiences, of course, losing trains, and missing connections; but nothing like this. Even when we had to take that little bumpy accommodation for a few hours, and it was so accommodating it stopped every few minutes 'to water the horses,' as dear Tilly said, nothing happened—though, to be sure, we almost did get left that time we all (except Aunt Julia) got off and went to pick flowers while our train waited for a freight to go by. But we didn't get quite left, and we did catch it. (Dear Tilly says we could have caught it, anyway, even if it had started, and that we shouldn't have had to walk very fast, at that! Tilly does make heaps of fun of all our trains except the fast ones on the main lines. And I don't know as I wonder, only I'd never tell her that, of course—that is, I wouldn't have told her before, perhaps.)