“Oh, no, not exactly now; though there will be such a harvest of them between this and Christmas that it will be hardly worth while for me to go back home this year. Eh, me! Ponsonby might as well be a full widower, for he has been a grass-widower most of the time since our girls have been married. True, the two youngest girls—Edith and Clara—are at home, and they keep house for their father while I am away. But you were asking me about the cause of my journey. It isn’t a baby this time; it is a wedding. My Boston son-in-law’s sister, who lives with him, is going to be married on Thursday, and all the family connections are to meet at his house. I and my three other married daughters are to go on to-morrow morning. I shall stay at my son-in-law Saxony’s house to-night. Here comes the conductor. Mr. P——,” she said, turning to that officer, “this young lady is not well. Is there any objection to my taking her into that vacant compartment where she can lie on the sofa?”
“No objection at all, Mrs. Ponsonby; the compartment is not engaged,” replied the polite conductor.
The lady arose and gave her arm to Lilith and took her to the sofa, where the exhausted girl was glad to lie down. Then she returned for her own and Lilith’s light luggage, which she transferred to the new seats.
As the conductor passed through the drawing-room car on his return, a stout passenger with iron-gray hair, who had sat three seats off from Lilith and her friend, on the opposite side of the car, and had watched the interview between the woman and the girl, and had heard as much or as little of their conversation as their low tones would permit, and had formed his own opinions on the subject—beckoned the officer to approach, and looking solemnly over the top of his spectacles said, impressively:
“Conductor, I want you to keep an eye on that pair who have just gone into the next compartment. That young girl is traveling alone. That stout woman first accosted her. She has some evil designs on that girl, I am sure of it! Robbery or worse! She has every opportunity to chloroform and rob the girl, or to drug her and take her away for something worse!”
“All right, sir! I know the old party! She is Mrs. Ponsonby, of Baltimore. And she will be met at the depot by her son-in-law, Mr. Saxony, of Number —— Street,” replied the amused officer.
“Oh, very well, if that is so! But her extraordinary proceedings of accosting a strange young lady in the cars very reasonably aroused my suspicions. I am glad it is no worse,” said the Detective Crank, in a tone of disappointment that illy accorded with his words.
In the meantime, Lilith reposed on the sofa and her new friend sat by her side and chatted to cheer her up.
With a rare delicacy she refrained from asking Lilith any questions as to the cause of that distress which had drawn the good woman to the girl’s side, until they were drawing near to New York. Then she inquired:
“Is there any one to meet you at Jersey City, my dear?”