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Page 18
"Yes," she confessed, squeezing the warm little hand in her own, which
had suddenly seemed to turn to ice. "My heart is going bump-bump-bump
like a scared wild rabbit's; but I keep saying over and over to myself
what the python said. Don't you remember in Kaa's hunting? 'A brave
heart and a courteous tongue, said he, they shall carry thee far through
the jungle, manling.' It can't be such a very big jungle that I'm going
into, and godmother will meet me in a few hours. Don't forget me, Davy,
while I'm gone."
She stooped to give the little fellow a hug and a kiss on each dimpled
cheek, for the train had stopped, and Mr. Appleton was waiting to shake
hands and lift her up the steps. Betty stumbled into the first vacant
seat she saw, and sat up primly, afraid to glance behind her. In her
lap, tightly clasped by both hands, she held a little old-fashioned
basket of brown willow. It had two handles and a lid with double flaps.
She carried it because she had no travelling-bag. Her lunch was in that,
her pass, five nickels, and the Red Ridinghood handkerchief.
"You can let that be a sort of warning to you," said Mrs. Appleton, at
parting, "not to get into conversation with strangers. Red Ridinghood
never would have got into trouble if she hadn't stopped to tell the Wolf
all she knew."
Remembering this warning, Betty sat up very straight at first, and held
the basket handles in such a tight grasp that her fingers ached. But
after the conductor had looked at her pass and smiled kindly into the
appealing little face under the white sunbonnet, she felt more at ease
and began to look shyly about her.
Somebody's grandmother was in the seat in front of her, such a fat,
comfortable-looking old lady, that Betty felt sure she could not be a
Wolf in disguise, and watched her with neighbourly interest. She fell to
wondering about her, where she lived and where she was going, and what
she had in her many bags, boxes, shawl-straps, and satchels.
Things were not half so strange as she had expected them to be. The
corn-fields and tobacco-fields and apple-orchards whizzing past the
windows were exactly like the ones she had left at home. More than once
a meadow full of daisies, gleaming on her sight like drifts of summer
snow, made her think of the lower pasture at home, where she had waded
through them the day before, waist-deep.
Even the people who came on the cars at the stations along the way
looked like the people she saw at church every week, and Betty soon
began to feel very much at home. After awhile the train stopped at a
junction where she had to wait several hours to make connection with the
Louisville train. But even that did not turn out to be a bad experience,
as she had feared, for the old lady waited too, and she was as anxious
to find a friend as Betty was. So it was not long until the two were
talking together as sociably as two old neighbours, and they ate their
lunch together with so many exchanges of confidences that they were both
surprised when Betty's train came puffing along. They had not imagined
the time could fly so fast.
At parting they kissed each other as if they had always been friends,
and Betty climbed into the car with a warm glow in her heart at having
found such unexpected pleasantness along the way.
"It was silly of me to have been so frightened," she thought. "The world
isn't a jungle, after all, and we are just as apt to meet the
grandmothers as the wolves when we go travelling."
She was mixing Kaa's experience with Red Riding-hood's in her thought,
but it made no difference. The conclusion she reached was a comfortable
one. So she leaned back in her seat to enjoy the rest of the journey
without any foolish fears.
Little by little the motion of the train had its effect. The white
sunbonnet nodded nearer and nearer toward the cushioned back of the
seat; the brown eyes drooped drowsily, and in a few minutes Betty was
sound asleep. That was the last she knew of the trip that she had
settled herself to enjoy, for when she awoke the brakeman was calling
"_Louisville_!" at the top of his voice, and people were beginning to
reach up to the racks overhead for their bundles.
There was a general uprising of the passengers. The crowd pushed toward
the door, carrying the startled child with them as they surged down the
aisle, and all at once--as she stepped off the train--she found herself
in the depths of her dreaded jungle. It was so confusing she did not
know which way to turn. The roar and clang of a great city smote on her
ears as she stood in the big Union depot, helpless, bewildered, and as
lost as a stray kitten in the midst of that noisy, pushing crowd. Sharp
elbows jostled her this way and that; strange faces streamed past her by
thousands, it seemed. How could anybody find anybody else in such a
whirlpool of people? Hunting for a needle in a haystack seemed nothing
in comparison to finding her godmother in such a crowd.
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