“Coming right up through, Ran?” the girls heard him ask. “I thought the train was off the track.”
“You laugh much more, and I’ll get up there, somehow”—
“Boys, boys,” came Fred Seacomb’s voice. “Don’t quarrel.”
“Say, Fred” (from Tom), “lend me your eyeglasses, will you? I’ve lost my pillow.”
At this point Miss Adelaide became fearfully thirsty, and putting her head out between her curtains, timidly called across to her brother to “please get her a drink of water.”
The Reverend Rossiter, who was just settling himself for a nap, dressed again, and staggered off down the car, returning with the welcome draught.
“Anybody else want any?” he asked good-naturedly.
Everybody was thirsty, and the clergyman’s ministrations with his cups of cold water did not cease until he had made several journeys to the ice tank.
During the night the heavy train rumbled steadily along over two hundred and fifty miles of iron rails, and when Randolph awoke next morning, he found they were at Chalk River, a small town on the frontiers of the great forest wilderness of inner Canada, where a fifteen-minute stop was made.