Annie Pore handed him her rumpled ticket.
"This is all you have?" he asked.
"Oh, yes, isn't that all right?" she entreated. "The man at the ticket window assured me it was right."
"Of course it is all right. Now there are five minutes before the train will be called, so if you young ladies will excuse me, I'll run downstairs to see that Tweedles' trunks are safe. By the way, have you attended to your luggage?" he asked me. "And you?" turning to Annie Pore.
"Thank you, yes," I answered; but the other girl looked piteously at her bursting telescope. "I haven't a trunk," she said simply.
I felt mighty sorry for Annie. The Tucker twins did, too. I could tell by their eyes. Dee's filled and Dum turned and walked to the steps with her father.
Dee whispered to me as she pretended to show me a picture in "Life":
"He's gone to get her a ticket in the parlor car. Just like him! Such a thoughtful Zebedee as he is! We mustn't let him know we are on. That would make him raging. He will carry it off perfectly naturally, and he is fully capable of any deceit to keep Annie Pore from finding it out."
He had done exactly as Dee said he would do: got a chair in the parlor car for "Orphan Annie." Right there I took myself to task for thinking of the poor girl as "Orphan Annie," and I determined to control my thoughts if possible and give her her proper name in my mind. Not that Annie Pore sounded much more cheerful than the name I had given her.
Our train was called and our kind courier bundled up bag and baggage and hustled us through the gates and into the chair car before Annie Pore had time to ask about it; and then he gave the Pullman conductor our tickets and settled us and the train started, and the girl never did know she was being treated to a privilege her ticket did not give her.