Then, returning to their berths, Tavia climbed the ladder, and everything was quiet.
“Dorothy,” she whispered, her head dangling over the side of the berth, “peep out and find the porter. I must have ice-cream.”
“Why, Tavia?” asked Dorothy.
“Just because,” answered Tavia in the most positive way.
Dorothy and Tavia both looked out from behind their curtains. Every other one was drawn tightly, save two, for Aunt Winnie and her friend and Ned, who had come back, were the only passengers still out of their berths. Ned winked at the girls when their heads appeared.
Holding up a warning finger at Ned, who faced them, the girls stole out of their section and crept silently toward the porter. In hurried whispers they consulted him, but the porter stood firm and unyielding. They could not be served with anything after the dining car closed.
So they then descended to coaxing. Just one girl pleading for ice-cream might have been resisted, but when two sleep-eyed young creatures, begged so pitifully to be served with it at once, the porter threw up his hands and said:
“Ah’ll see if it can be got, but Ah ain’t got no right fo’ to git it tho!”
Soon he reappeared with two plates of ice-cream. Tavia took one plate in both hands hungrily, and Dorothy took the other. When they looked at Aunt Winnie’s back, Ned stared, but Aunt Winnie was too deeply interested in her old friend to care what Ned was staring at.
“Duck!” cautioned Tavia, who was ahead of Dorothy, as she saw Aunt Winnie suddenly turn her head. They slipped into the folds of a nearby curtain, but sprang instantly back into the centre of the aisle. Snoring, deep and musical, sounded directly into their ears from behind the curtain, and even Tavia’s love of adventure quailed at the awful nearness of the sound. One little lurch and they would have landed in the arms of the snoring one!