Part 7 (1/2)
”I can't locate my friend,” she began. ”Have you seen her?”
”Say, Alf,” interrupted another member of the working force coming up from the next car. ”I got a-what do you call a sonomballist? The sort that plays baseball in a sound sleep,” the black-faced man grinned. ”I got a strange lady in a strange place, and she belongs in your car. You got to extract her.”
”What-what you-all mean, Ferd?” asked Alf, while Jane waited apprehensively.
”You come along wiff me and I'll demonstrate,” proposed Ferd, otherwise Ferdinand. ”I'se been argufying wiff de lady, didn't like to shake her zactly. But she don't pear to want to come back to you, Alf. She has took a notion to me.” He grinned and chuckled in the good nature characteristic of the well-trained Pullman porter.
Jane listened with increasing anxiety. It might really be Judith, but where was she?
”What you asked for, please?” Alfred inquired of Jane. ”Ferdinand has no 'cuse to interrupt,” he apologized.
”Oh, that was all right,” Jane quickly a.s.sured him. ”I wonder if he may have found my-friend?”
”Not likely a young lady,” said Alfred with a strong emphasis on _young_. As if an _old_ lady might be suspected of anything queer, but that a young miss would a.s.suredly hardly be so careless.
”But my friend is very absent minded.” Jane prepared him. ”She does queer things through forgetfulness.”
”Can you come right now?” insisted the waiting Ferd to Jane's porter.
”I'se got to get rid of this-lady somehow.”
”I'll go too, if I may?” timidly inquired Jane. ”I have lost a friend”
(this to Ferd). ”She is very absent minded.”
”Laikly she is my-discovery,” ventured the colored man striving to be polite and finding it difficult to treat the situation seriously. ”Come right along.”
At the other end of the car Jane stood stock still, as she read the sign ”Gentlemen Smoking.” But Ferd promptly a.s.sured her.
”Not a soul in here but the lady. Not a man could get in, and there was some kicking. All right for ladies to smoke. Lots of 'em do, but they has to have their own private quarters.” He was opening the door of the smoking room with that caution usually displayed if a cat is expected to jump. Jane followed, and once within the room she sprang to the curled up figure, sleeping peacefully, in the big cus.h.i.+oned chair. It was Judith!
”Judith!” Jane called. ”Judy, wake up! Come!”
The unconscious girl slowly-too slowly, came back to the realm of directed thought. She was awake at last.
”Why-Jane-” she drawled. ”What's the fuss? I was dreaming about wonderful cigars.”
Both porters stepped back respectfully-or to laugh safely. Dreaming of cigars appealed to their sense of humor.
”Judith-this is the gentlemen's smoking room,” Jane breathed, trying hard to drag the still drowsy girl to her feet. ”How ever did you get in here?”
By this time Judith realized something was wrong. She gathered the folds of her Burgundy robe tight around her, and tried to inflict a severe look on the giggling porters.
”You sure did hol' de fort, Miss,” Ferd insisted on saying. ”The gent-men had to go without their smoke this morning.”
Too embarra.s.sed for further conversation the girls stole out of the usurped room. Just at the little turn in the aisle, the very narrow place where a crowd is always trying to squeeze by at once, they encountered a group of would-be smokers ready to defend their rights.
They were talking none too meekly, and seeing the girl still in negligee one had the poor taste to remark: ”There she is. Some sleeper!”
Judith blushed to the roots of her dark hair, but Jane glanced at the bounder defiantly. Didn't he have manners enough to respect a girl who was just absent minded?