"Take it from me girls don't have no idea about spending money," Marty groaned, swallowing the last mouthful of a ten cent plate of beef stew as he saw Janice leave the restaurant. "The sign on that window over there says: 'Dinner seventy-five cents.' Hi tunket! How can anybody eat seventy-five cents worth of victuals to once't? I never knew Janice had that capacity."
Marty had insisted upon being given a reservation in another car from that in which Janice was to ride. He was glad to note when the long train rolled in that his was a rear car. Janice would ride next to the dining car.
The boy had no use for the dining car or buffet. He had supplied himself with a box of cheap lunch. If his cousin had money "to throw to the birdies," as Marty privately expressed it, not so the son of Mr. Jason Day of Polktown! After all he had said about his father being a "tight-wad" Marty found that it positively hurt to spend more for a thing than he believed it was worth.
He made sure that Janice with her bag boarded the train. He was one of the last to get on himself, thus making sure that nothing had happened to cause his cousin to alight again.
But Janice, relieved because she had seen nobody from Polktown, found herself very pleasantly situated in her car. Nobody had interfered with her in any way. The lunch given her on the train to Albany was a most mysterious thing; but whoever had given it to her seemed not desirous of halting her determined course.
Janice had secured an upper berth; but she did not mind that. She found that the woman who was to occupy the one beneath was already on the train.
She was a black-eyed, dark, rather Oriental-looking person, and Janice thought her quite handsome in a majestic way. And she possessed an engaging smile.
"You are traveling alone, my dear—yes?" the woman asked her with an intonation distinctly foreign. "All the way to Chicago?"
"And beyond," Janice said pleasantly.
"Ach! You American girls are wonderfully independent—yes? Friends will meet you at your journey's end?"