Janice had noticed only the two traveling salesmen; but she made no comment. She did not suppose she was in the least interested in that fourth passenger whom she had not seen.
At last they reached the Landing. The railroad here was only a branch line and the cars were old-fashioned and uncomfortable. She could get no good accommodations to Albany she well knew, so she bought a ticket only as far as that city.
Had she intended going south and west by way of New York she would have been obliged to make some arrangement to get over to Middletown to take the train there. This might have caused comment. Besides, from what Frank Bowman had said, she believed she could save both time and money by taking the Great Lakes route.
There were three day coaches in the little train already made up at the Landing. Janice chose a seat in the middle coach without any idea that somebody in whom she would have been very much interested stole into the rear car before the train started.
Marty dared not go to the ticket office, for fear his cousin might look out of the car-window and see him. But he was quite sure Janice was bound for Albany first, and he paid his fare to that point when the conducter came through.
It was a tiring ride, with stops at "everybody's barnyard gate," and the coaches filled up and were half emptied again two or three times during the journey. Janice had made no preparation for luncheon and once when the train halted at a junction "ten minutes for refreshments" as the brakeman bawled it out, she could find nothing in the bare and dirty lunchroom fit to eat or drink.
When she returned, hopeless and hungry, to her seat there was a neatly wrapped shoebox lying on the dusty plush cushion.
"Why! whose is this?" she involuntarily asked aloud.
"Isn't it for you, my dear?" asked a woman who occupied the seat directly behind hers and to whom Janice had already spoken.
The girl picked up the package and read scrawled upon it in an entirely unfamiliar handwriting: "Miss Janice Day."