“Well—you see, Mrs. Grey, it was—an accident. The old gentleman got off to get a drink and the train left him.”
I could not help laughing.
“If you will allow me, madam,” said my new friend, “I will see you to your hotel. How about your baggage?”
“Oh!” I cried in dismay, “Mr. C——— has my trunk-check in his pocket.”
My new friend considered. “If he comes on the next train, perhaps that will be in time to get your trunk off with you to Culpeper. If not, your trunk will follow you immediately. I’ll see the conductor and do what I can. I’m going out of town to-morrow, but Captain Jeter is here and I’ll tell him about your trunk-check. He’ll be sure to see Mr. C———.”
I was to see Dan the next day, and nothing else mattered. I made my mind easy about that trunk, and my new friend took me to the American, where I spent the evening very pleasantly in receiving old acquaintances and making new ones.
But with bedtime another difficulty arose: I had never slept in a room at a hotel by myself in my life. Fortunately, Mrs. Hopson, of Norfolk, happened to be spending the night there. I sent up a note asking if I might sleep with her, and went up to her room half an hour later prepared for a delightful talk about Norfolk. When we were ready for bed, she took up one of her numerous satchels and put it down on the side where I afterward lay down to sleep.
“I put that close by the bed because it contains valuables,” she said with an impressive solemnity I afterward understood.
Of course I asked no questions, though she referred to the valuables several times. We were in bed and the lights had been out some time when I had occasion to ask her where she had come from there.
“Oh, Nell!” she said, “didn’t you know? I’ve been to Charlottesville and I’ve come from there to-day. Didn’t you know about it? John” (her son) “was wounded. Didn’t you know about it? Of course I had to go to him. They had to perform an operation on him. I was right there when they did it.” Here followed a graphic account of the operation. “It was dreadful. You see that satchel over there?” pointing to the one just beneath my head on the floor.