“No fluids, thank you—something solid and substantial, like pancakes with syrup. Besides,” she whispered to her father, “imagine, orange juice, forty cents a glass!” His smile and nod commended her for her good sense.
After breakfast they hurried to the last car. It was a comfortable lounge in the center of which was a short flight of steps. They ascended the stairway and entered the Vista Dome, a train above a train, completely glassed in, even the top. The Luries crowded together in the last vacant seat. They were silent, enraptured by the beauty of the scene. Mountains hemmed them in on both sides. “What if there were a landslide?” Judy thought, “and one of those overhanging crags came crashing down on the glass dome!”
The train climbed steadily. As the hours passed, the mountains took on a somber brown and dullish red and assumed the fantastic shapes of turreted castles. Frequently the train disappeared into a tunnel cut through the mountain. One of them, “the Moffat Tunnel,” the loudspeaker announced, “is a great engineering feat and is six miles long.”
Many seats were vacant now. People were getting tired in spite of the glorious views. Judy noticed a girl about her own age sitting alone.
“Why don’t you go over and speak to her,” her mother suggested. “She’ll probably be glad of your company.”
Within a matter of minutes Judy and Audrey were like old friends.
“We’ve lived in so many cities,” Audrey said with a tired shrug. “Now we’re bound for L.A.” At Judy’s look of interrogation, she added, “Los Angeles.”
“We’d only just bought a house in Omaha. Now it’s up for sale! Honestly, my father says his boss moves him around like a piece on a checkerboard!”
Judy was sympathetic. “I thought only musicians move so much.”
“Musicians? You?”