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Page 25
"The car seems paved with bottles of Apollinaris and with
lemons," wrote Katy to her father. "There seems no limit to the
supply. Just as surely as it grows warm and dusty, and we begin
to remember that we are thirsty, a tinkle is heard, and Bayard
appears with a tray,--iced lemonade, if you please, made with
Apollinaris water with strawberries floating on top! What do you
think of that at thirty miles an hour? Bayard is the colored
butler. The cook is named Roland. We have a fine flavor of peers
and paladins among us, you perceive.
"The first day out was cool and delicious, and we had no dust.
At six o'clock we stopped at a junction, and our car was
detached and run off on a siding. This was because Mr. Dayton
had business in the place, and we were to wait and be taken on
by the next express train soon after midnight. At first they ran
us down to a pretty place by the side of the river, where it was
cool, and we could look out on the water and a green bank
opposite, and we thought we were going to have such a nice
night; but the authorities changed their minds, and presently
to our deep disgust a locomotive came puffing down the road,
clawed us up, ran us back, and finally left us in the middle of
innumerable tracks and switches just where all the freight
trains came in and met. All night long they were arriving and
going out. Cars loaded with cattle, cars loaded with sheep, with
pigs! Such bleatings and mooings and gruntings, I never heard in
all my life before. I could think of nothing but that verse in
the Psalms, 'Strong bulls of Bashan have beset me round,' and
could only hope that the poor animals did not feel half as badly
as they sounded.
"Then long before light, as we lay listening to these lamentable
roarings and grunts, and quite unable to sleep for heat and
noise, came the blessed express, and presently we were away out
of all the din, with the fresh air of the prairie blowing in;
and in no time at all we were so sound asleep that it seemed but
a minute before morning. Phil's slumbers lasted so long that we
had to breakfast without him, for Mrs. Dayton would not let us
wake him up. You can't think how kind she is, and Mr. Dayton
too; and this way of travelling is so easy and delightful that
it scarcely seems to tire one at all. Phil has borne the journey
wonderfully well so far."
At Omaha, on the evening of the second day, Clover's future "matron" and
adviser, Mrs. Watson, was to join them. She had been telegraphed to from
Chicago, and had replied, so that they knew she was expecting them.
Clover's thoughts were so occupied with curiosity as to what she would
turn out to be, that she scarcely realized that she was crossing the
Mississippi for the first time, and she gave scant attention to the low
bluffs which bound the river, and on which the Indians used to hold their
councils in those dim days when there was still an "undiscovered West" set
down in geographies and atlases.
As soon as they reached the Omaha side of the river, she and Katy jumped
down from the car, and immediately found themselves face to face with an
anxious-looking little old lady, with white hair frizzled and banged over
a puckered forehead, and a pair of watery blue eyes peering from beneath,
evidently in search of somebody. Her hands were quite full of bags and
parcels, and a little heap of similar articles lay on the platform near
her, of which she seemed afraid to lose sight for a moment.
"Oh, is it Miss Carr?" was her first salutation. "I'm Mrs. Watson. I
thought it might be you, from the fact that you got out of that car, and
it seems rather different--I am quite relieved to see you. I didn't know
but something--My daughter she said to me as I was coming away, 'Now,
Mother, don't lose yourself, whatever you do. It seems quite wild to think
of you in Canyon this and Canyon that, and the Garden of the Gods! Do get
some one to keep an eye on you, or we shall never hear of you again.
You'll--' It's quite a comfort that you have got here. I supposed you
would, but the uncertainty--Oh, dear! that man is carrying off my trunks.
Please run after him and tell him to bring them back!"
"It's all right; he's the porter," explained Mr. Dayton. "Did you get your
checks for Denver or St. Helen's?"
"Oh, I haven't any checks yet. I didn't know which it ought to be, so I
waited till--Miss Carr and her brother would see to it for me I knew, and
I wrote my daughter--My friend, Mrs. Peters,--I've been staying with her,
you know,--was sick in bed, and I wouldn't let--Dear me! what has that
gentleman gone off for in such a hurry?"
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