“Oh, yes, if you would, thanks,” exclaimed the mother, gratefully. “Baby is teething, and is fretful, and she won’t go to sleep.”
“How did you know they were twins?” asked Ted, when she helped Polly trot them down to the wash-room to cool their hot little faces.
“They just looked that way,” Polly said cheerfully. “Sue, why don’t you get that old lady a drink of water from the cooler? She’s tried twice to go, and she can’t walk alone with the train jolting.”
Jean said nothing, but she noticed everything behind her new book. This trip in the day coach was helping the girls in a way they hardly realized as yet. On all sides of them were opportunities for lending help to people less fortunate than themselves, and they responded readily, and far more willingly than she had even dared to hope. In a way, she had looked forward to the trip under these conditions as a test for the girls, accustomed as they were to home comforts and utter lack of responsibility. Not even Isabel complained, as the day wore on.
When dinner time arrived, they secured two small tables from the porter in the forward parlor cars, for a quarter tip, and made the first raid on their lunch baskets and boxes. These had been planned directly under Jean’s supervision. The perishable things were to be disposed of the first day, and the canned goods saved over for the rest of the journey.
In the beginning, space economy had been the first consideration, but the lunches had been made very inviting nevertheless.
“It is just as easy to have a lunch look nice as not,” Jean had said, and these were surely a success, for they were both tempting and attractive. All sandwiches were wrapped in waxed tissue paper. Jars of pimento cheese, and olives were opened handily, and there were plenty of Saratoga chips to help out, and some of Aunty Welcome’s famous hermits.
“We’ll keep the fruit until breakfast,” said Miss Murray. “And we’ll probably come to some station where we can buy chocolate, or malted milk. It’s more fun than a dining car, isn’t it?”
“It’s like starting in to camp out, even now,” Polly declared. “And we’ve all got our traveling duties mapped out, too. I’m to look after the twins, and Sue has charge of the old lady. Isabel has been loaning her fan and some magazines to a young girl who is going West for her health. She sits in the last seat on our side, Miss Murray; you can just see her hair as she leans back. How much more entertaining everything is when you forget about yourself, and feel interested in what the rest of the world is doing?”
“Are you just finding that out, Polly?” Jean asked, her gray eyes full of amusement at Polly’s earnestness. “That is only the sweet old motto of ‘noblesse oblige,’ set to modern music. We learn it with our riding out home.”