“Well, New York is a long way off yet, and you are not able to sit up all the way. Now in the next compartment—a little compartment right behind us—there is a sofa and two chairs, all unoccupied. Let me take you in there, and you can lie on the sofa and I will sit in one of the chairs and keep you company. Will you come? I will carry your bag.”
Lilith hesitated.
“Well, I declare,” said her new friend, “you look like the girl in the song—
‘Half willing!—half afraid.’
But you have no cause to be afraid of me, my dear. I only wish to be a help to you. I would not hurt a hair of your head,” said the good woman, earnestly.
“Oh, indeed I am sure you would not. You are very, very kind. And I am very thankful to you. I am not afraid of you, but of the conductor,” said Lilith.
“Of the conductor!” exclaimed the lady, with surprise and then with a laugh. “Why, on the face of the earth, should you be afraid of the conductor, my child?”
“He might accuse us of trespassing, if we should go into that vacant apartment, for which we have no tickets, and I don’t know what the law for trespassing may be on the cars,” said Lilith.
“Well,” laughed the lady, “it is nothing very dreadful—it is not hanging, nor penal servitude for life, nor even fine or imprisonment. It is simply to be politely requested to vacate a position to which you have no right in favor of some one who has a right—supposing such a one should turn up. Otherwise you may keep the place to the end of the journey. But if it would make you feel any better, I will speak to the conductor next time he passes through the cars. I have traveled this road so many times—how many you may know when I tell you that for the last seven years I have had one daughter married in Brooklyn, one in Jersey City, one in New York and one in Boston, and I spend nearly all my time in going backwards and forwards between my home in Baltimore and their homes. Think of it, my dear! There are four of them, and every one of them has a baby every year. And I have to go on every time a baby is expected, and then have to be there a month before the baby comes, and stay a month afterwards. But, as I was saying, I have traveled this road so frequently that I know all the conductors, and I like the one on this train better than any of them; for there is nothing in the line of his duty that he would not do for me, or for any woman.”
“Are you going on now to meet an expected little grandchild?” inquired Lilith, who, child-like, had ceased to weep when she became interested in something else besides her sorrows.