"Oh, are you getting out?" said she.
To be sure he was. He was already hurrying down the aisle, too proud to confess that he could possibly have made a mistake.
He was just behind a woman with a baby in her arms, and had to wait for both the baby and the woman to be helped out. By the time he had got out himself, and before he had a moment to look around him, the cars were moving on again!
It was the most astonishing thing! There he stood at the door of a wretched little wood-shed, close by the platform, swinging, his arms and crying, "Stop! stop!" But nobody heard except the baby and its mother, and nobody answered except the baby with an "Argoo, argoo," out of its silly little throat. So this was Bremen! This wood-shed and two or three houses!
It was a sad predicament for Preston, but a worse one for Flaxie. She, too, cried, "Stop! stop!" bounding up and down on the seat like an India-rubber ball. But the cars paid as little heed to her as they had paid to her brother. On they went, rattle, rattle, rattle. What cared they for a passenger overboard? What cared they for a passenger's sister left frantic and forlorn?
She would have appealed to the conductor, but he was in the next car. So was the brakeman, so was even the pop-corn boy.
The people went on talking and reading without minding her. They probably thought her a very restless child, for they had not seen her quiet that morning. So it was not till she began to wring her hands and sob aloud that they suspected anything unusual had happened.
"What is the matter, little girl?" asked an old lady, leaning forward and offering her a paper of sassafras lozenges. Flaxie waved it away.
"Was it your brother that just left the car?" asked a kind old gentleman, suddenly recollecting the handsome lad in spectacles. "Did he get out on purpose?"
"Yes, sir, oh, yes, sir! on purpose to get me some cake! But he's lost over! Oh, dear, he's lost over! I can't make 'em stop."