Flaxie smiled and looked at her check. She felt the whole care of the journey, but it didn’t trouble her at all, for the captain would tell her when to stop. She “’membered” all about Hilltop just as well as could be, but she didn’t ’xactly know where it was!
It was a pleasant ride on that beautiful spring day, and the captain would have been very agreeable, only he seemed to have a perfect horror of “pinnuts,” the very things Flaxie had dreamed about and expected to eat all the way. He shook his head at the peanut boys, and told her he “wished they would keep away with their trash!” If he had only gone into a smoking-car and left her, she might have bought some, for she had her red portemonnaie with her; but then he never thought of leaving her, for he really had no idea she was travelling alone.
She had said Uncle Ben would laugh at meeting her; and so he did. He threw up both hands and cried, “Bless me! what’s all this?” for it is not every day one sees a little girl of just that color; but he looked sober the next minute.
“Poor little thing, you’ve had a hard time.”
“Oh no, sir, not very,” said Flaxie, thinking he meant the journey. “I like to travel alone.”
Captain Jones, who was putting the little umbrella into the carriage, laughed, and said he wished he had known that before.
“Good-bye,” said he, kissing his hand to her. “I shall miss you very much, for I don’t like to travel alone!”
Then Flaxie drove off with her uncle in the nice easy carriage, and found Aunt Charlotte and all her cousins delighted to see her, as she had known they would be. She had told the captain they were “elegant cousins;” but when Johnny exclaimed, “Hullo! Miss Frizzle, you look like a pickled lime,” she blushed a sort of pinkish-green blush, and thought he had grown very disagreeable.
“Well, I didn’t mean anything. I’ve seen folks look worse’n you do—a good deal,” added the little fellow, and thought it a handsome apology.
“I’ll tell you who looks worse,” he broke in again, as they were all seated at supper; “it’s our teacher, Miss Pike. She isn’t the same color by a long shot, but she’s awful homely.”