“We can’t talk much. The train is making too much noise,” she said above the creaks and rattles.
“That’s all right. I’m a little tired, anyway,” Judy confessed. “It’s been a long day.”
“Why don’t you lean back and close your eyes?” Irene suggested. “I will, too. It’s an hour’s ride—” A yawn came, interrupting the sentence.
“I won’t sleep,” Judy told herself when she saw that Irene was resting. “I’ll have to keep my eyes open to watch for our station.”
The conductor, she discovered a little later, was calling the stations. She roused herself to listen, dozing between stops. But it was only her conscious mind that slept. The thoughts she could control were at rest, but other thoughts came unbidden. My hair is dull. My hair is drab. But those were Clarissa’s thoughts! They rushed on with the train. Dull! Drab! Dull! Drab!—faster and faster.
As the unwanted thoughts pounded in Judy’s head the train swayed, first this way and then that way. A frail old lady making her way down the aisle changed suddenly to a young girl with golden hair. Judy stared at her. Then she looked at the girl sitting beside her and saw that she, too, had golden hair. Her face was blank like the face of a department-store dummy. It was a man before! He had been reading a newspaper! How had the strange transformation taken place? Had it happened this way to Clarissa?
Behind Judy sat another girl with a blank face and golden hair. Another one was in front and still another across the aisle. The train, moving backwards now, seemed full of golden-haired girls with identical faces. Judy’s thoughts, too, were moving in a reverse direction. Now she was at the station backing through the gates. All the golden-haired people surged forward, pressing closer and closer until she could scarcely breathe. She tried to call to them in protest. At last, as if from a great distance, she heard her own voice whispering Irene’s name. She tried desperately to speak louder and presently the cry came.
“Irene!”
With that she swayed and would have fallen sideways if the man with the newspaper hadn’t caught her. Irene was at her side. Unaccountably, they were back in the train.
“How—where—what?” Judy stammered. She was awake now, but the feeling that a crowd of golden-haired people were suffocating her still lingered.