Yet she could scarcely help laughing at the doleful expression of her sister’s face, when the little party had disentangled themselves and their belongings from the railway carriage, and were standing, bewildered and forlorn, trying to look about them in the murky air.
“Mustn’t we see about our luggage, mamma?” said Blanche, feeling herself considerably at a disadvantage in this strange and all but invisible world. “It is managed the same way as in France, I suppose. We must find the—what do they call the room where we wait to claim it?”
“I—I really don’t know,” said Mrs Derwent. “It will be all right, I suppose, if we follow the others.”
But there were no “others” with any very definite goal, apparently. There were two or three little crowds dimly to be seen at different parts of the train, whence boxes seemed to be disgorging.
“It is much more puzzling than in France,” said Blanche, her own spirits flagging. “I do hope we shall not have long to wait. This air is really choking.”
She had Herty’s hand in hers, and moved forward towards a lamp, with some vague idea that its light would lessen her perplexity. Suddenly a face flashed upon her, and a sense of something bright and invigorating came over her almost before she had time to associate the two together.
The face was that of a person standing just under the lamp—a girl, a tall young girl with brilliant but kindly eyes, and a general look of extreme, overflowing youthful happiness. She smiled at Blanche, overhearing her last words.
“You should call a porter,” she said. “They are rather scarce to-night, the train was so full, and the fog is so confusing. Stay—there is one.—Porter!—He will see to your luggage. You won’t have as long to wait as in Paris.”
A sort of breath of thanks was all there was time for, then the girl turned at the sound of a name—“Hebe”—through the fog, and was instantly lost to view. But her face, her joyous face, in its strange setting of dingy yellow-brown, streaked with the almost dingier struggling gas-light, was impressed upon Blanche’s memory, like a never-to-be-forgotten picture.