Belle said this with a sigh, as if even the prospect of the "good long visit" could scarcely console her for the present separation from Maggie and Bessie.
"Who are you with?" was Mamie's next question.
"Papa and Daphne and Uncle and Aunt Walton," answered Belle.
"Oh! and Ma—bel?" said Mamie, following the direction of Belle's eye, and seeing the head of her little cousin, Mabel Walton, peeping out from the door of a compartment at the end of the car.
"Yes. You don't seem very rejoiced about Mabel," said Belle, who had noticed the tone in which Mamie uttered the last words,—a tone expressive of any thing but pleasure.
"An' no wonder," muttered old Daphne, Belle's nurse, who stood behind her young mistress; but Mamie, thinking it as well to change the subject of conversation, only said,—
"Don't you want to see my little sister Lulu, Belle?"
"Yes," answered Belle with alacrity, and would have followed Mamie at once to that part of the saloon where her friends were seated, if Daphne had not interfered, saying,—
"You just come back to your pa, honey. De hosses done pullin' us now, and dey're gwine for put to de injine, and dere'll be a screechin' an' a shakin' an' a jerkin' fit to knock de bref out of yer. 'Sides, I've foun' out it's best to stick close to yer pa when we're trabellin' roun'. Come to lose sight of him, 'taint easy sayin' what'll become of us."
And with a fearful recollection of having been "gone off with" by the cars on one occasion, when she had been separated from her papa, Belle rushed back to the compartment of her own party, and, in dread of such a catastrophe occurring again, clung to him till the train was speeding on its way. Then she felt safe; neither she nor papa could leave the cars while they were rushing on at this rate.