The station was finally reached. No one was there but a watchman with a lantern in his hand, and he did not know either of them.
"Ticket-office isn't open at this hour," John explained to Dora. "We'll have to pay on the train. We change cars at Bristol. I'll pay that far and we may stop there and rest. This night traveling may go hard with a little thing like you. I've got to attend to you, Sis—eh? Did you catch that? It slipped out as natural as you please, and Sis it is, from now on. Yes, I've got to see that you are fed properly and have a tonic to get your blood right."
When the train came they got aboard. The car was about half full of passengers, nearly all of whom were asleep. John led his wide-eyed charge to a seat, put a valise down for a pillow, and made her take off her hat and lie down. "Close your peepers and take a nap," he jested. "I'm going into the smoker and light my pipe."
A half-hour later he came back. She was asleep. Her hat had fallen to the floor, and he carefully placed it in the rack overhead. Her features in repose appeared almost angelic, despite the fact that the cinders had drifted in at the window and lay on the young cheeks beneath the fallen lashes.
"Poor little rat!" he said to himself. "You are in bad hands, Sis, but maybe no worse off than you were." He recalled Eperson's studied courtesy and attention to Martha Jane and wondered if, after all, Eperson were becoming his absent instructor.
He sat down in the seat across the aisle from Dora and looked out at the window. The coming dawn was lighting the fields through which the train was scurrying like a monster of fire and smoke. The eastern sky was slowly filling with liquid gold. Dora slept till the sun was well up. Then she stirred and waked. He saw her glance around the car in amazement and then she saw him, smiled sheepishly, and flushed a little.
"I was dreaming," she said. "I thought I was flying away up in the air and that I never would light."
"We are going to have some breakfast in a little while," he informed her. "There is a dining-car on this train, and I'll order something brought to us here. A little table fits in here under the window. Come on, I'll show you where to wash your hands and face."
He led her to the ladies' lavatory, taught her how to supply the basin with water. He got a towel from an overhead rack, showed her a brush and comb that were for the use of passengers, and left her to make her toilet.
She came back to him presently, looking brighter and better, and they sat side by side till a negro porter in a white uniform came with the table and their breakfast. It had an inviting look—the fruit, the fried eggs, the thin-sliced bacon, the hot, brown cakes, dainty toast, and aromatic coffee, and the child partook of them with unusual relish.