“Why—why—I don’t know. I feel so kind of queer and sick-y inside of me. I’m not ill—like eating too much candy; but—I don’t feel very nice. I mean, it’s all right, dear Papa. And I am really, truly glad. ’Cause then you’ll get rested, won’t you? And you’ll go to the eye-man and be fixed; and then—maybe—I s’pose we’ll go home again.”
But already the train had stopped, and the porter, who had neglected these two for more importunate passengers, hurried up to give them a farewell “brush” and to help them with their parcels.
Alas! poor Mr. Calthorp required assistance now as he had not done at familiar Santa Felisa. The close confinement, the almost sleepless nights of the long journey, and the growing anxiety, had affected his dim vision most unfavorably; and the constant attention of his little daughter was necessary to him as he stepped from the car and joined the throng of liberated passengers passing forward into the station.
“Lead me into the ticket office. Can you make it out? Ask any man in uniform.”
Steenie looked up startled. There was a sharp, imperious note in her father’s voice which was new to her, forced from him by the sudden conviction that he was no longer losing his sight, but that it was already lost, and that he had come eastward—too late.
Obediently the little girl touched the arm of an official, passing at that moment. “Please, sir, will you tell us where to go? My father—”
Mr. Calthorp took the explanation from her lips, and the man in the blue uniform looked compassionately upon these two who seemed so helpless, and whose manner so plainly bore the stamp of the far west, where threading narrow streets and dodging crowds are not every-day events.
“Sorry, little one, but—I’m in a hurry. Call somebody else;” and he turned away.
As he did so, he caught the quiver of a girlish, travel-soiled lip, and a look of terror in a pair of big blue eyes; and his feet refused to carry him further from the spot.
“Pshaw! Almost train-time—hm-m. All right, Sissy. Here, this way, sir;” and slipping his arm through Mr. Calthorp’s, the conductor of an out-going “express” wheeled sharply about, and guided his charges into a waiting-room, where he consigned them to: “Here, you, twenty-seven! Look out for these folks! There you are, little one. This man will—” The rest was lost in the distance as, with the skill of a veteran railroader, the kind conductor boarded an already moving car and disappeared.