"This is yours, madam." He offered any other assistance, while the porter placed their possessions in the rack and departed to see to their heavy baggage.
"All this ours!" Dick queried, looking round the compartment. It was fitted with a seat on one side only—a wide, comfortable seat, upholstered in grey. A folding nickel wash-basin was near the window, with towels overhead. Everything was solid and comfortable and compact.
"Yes, it's ours," smiled his mother.
"But you said it was a sleeper?"
"Yes; the conductor will wave his magic wand and produce your bed out of that wall later on."
"Oh!" said Dick, and fell to examining the wall, to find out its mechanism. Meanwhile the clamour about them redoubled; people hurried along the corridor, peeping in, and withdrawing again impatiently at sight of the occupied compartment. Others peered from the platform through their windows, and a heated lady asked anxiously, "Is that you, Willie dear?" and then fled without waiting for an answer. Bells rang, somewhere afar the engine gave a furious whistle, and slowly the great train slid out of the station, while the theatrical people and their friends sang "For He's a Jolly Good Fellow" with immense enthusiasm. Gathering speed, they whisked through the packed streets of North Melbourne and Newmarket, and out beyond to the wide Keilor Plains.
"Off at last, Dickie!" said his mother.
"Yes." They looked at each other, very content.
Daylight held until they had flashed past Bacchus Marsh, with its deep green of fertile farms, where the willows were beginning to wave their long feathery arms; and soon after came dinner, which in itself was an event to Dick. A white-jacketed waiter summoned them, and they followed the long corridor, which seemed to swing under their feet, until they came to a carriage fitted as a dining-room, with little tables for two or four people, sparkling with polished glass and silver-plated fittings on snow-white linen. The theatrical people filled many of the tables; they were very merry, and rather loud-voiced, calling to each other across the car. Dick privately thought them rather entertaining, but he saw his mother wrinkle her pretty nose two or three times in a way he knew meant disapproval.
One of the actresses came in a few minutes later, and, disregarding shouted invitations to "come and sit here," finally paused by Mrs. Lester's table, where there were two vacant seats. She hesitated. "May I?"