THE HOMESEEKERS’ SPECIAL

When the 8:35 local for Washington left Queen’s Ferry, the morning of the tenth of July, it carried Miss Murray and her five girl charges, westward bound. The Admiral went down to the station to see them off, together with Mrs. Warner, and Mrs. Lee.

“Don’t worry about them one bit, please,” Jean said, as she clasped each of the mothers’ hands. “It is not a wild-west affair at all. Ours is a dear, home ranch, and we will keep the girls out of any trouble.”

“I won’t worry as soon as I am sure you are really there,” Mrs. Lee replied, “but I am afraid the trip will be wearisome without any special privileges.”

“Never mind about special privileges for this club,” Polly declared as she settled down in the car seat finally. “We’ll have the best time yet, making believe we are homeseekers and land-tourists, won’t we, girls?”

“You’re crowing at the wrong end of the journey, Polly,” Jean warned, but it surely seemed, from the first, as if the trip promised well for all of them.

At Washington, they waited in the great, marble depot for the train to be made up, and the girls found plenty to occupy the time. The very first outlay in cash was for post-cards. Polly bought some even for Aunty and Mandy and old Uncle Peter.

But it was not until they found themselves fairly settled on the train for Chicago, and actually moving west, that they felt themselves true travelers. As Ruth declared, it was a proud moment when the Polly Page Ranch Club paid its own way, with money it had earned through its own efforts. However, the fares lowered their principal so much that they finally had decided to forego sleepers.

“Real summer tourists never take sleepers; not if they can get out of it,” Ted said, happily, as she bolstered her suit-case up on a rack in what they called the Tourists’ Special. Jean had the brakeman turn the seats over, so that they could all sit together. “I think I’d be nervous with a sleeper berth over my head, wouldn’t you, Polly?”

Polly laughed.

“Surely would.” She looked about her at all the different faces. There were many people with children in this day coach, and they looked tired and worn out even before the journey had fairly begun. “Like wilted flowers,” Ruth said.

Polly watched the group across the aisle as long as she could stand it. The mother was weary and flustered, with two toddlers bumping into everything, and a baby crying in her arms.

“Can’t we amuse the twins?” she asked, suddenly.

“Oh, yes, if you would, thanks,” exclaimed the mother, gratefully. “Baby is teething, and is fretful, and she won’t go to sleep.”

“How did you know they were twins?” asked Ted, when she helped Polly trot them down to the wash-room to cool their hot little faces.

“They just looked that way,” Polly said cheerfully. “Sue, why don’t you get that old lady a drink of water from the cooler? She’s tried twice to go, and she can’t walk alone with the train jolting.”

Jean said nothing, but she noticed everything behind her new book. This trip in the day coach was helping the girls in a way they hardly realized as yet. On all sides of them were opportunities for lending help to people less fortunate than themselves, and they responded readily, and far more willingly than she had even dared to hope. In a way, she had looked forward to the trip under these conditions as a test for the girls, accustomed as they were to home comforts and utter lack of responsibility. Not even Isabel complained, as the day wore on.

When dinner time arrived, they secured two small tables from the porter in the forward parlor cars, for a quarter tip, and made the first raid on their lunch baskets and boxes. These had been planned directly under Jean’s supervision. The perishable things were to be disposed of the first day, and the canned goods saved over for the rest of the journey.

In the beginning, space economy had been the first consideration, but the lunches had been made very inviting nevertheless.

“It is just as easy to have a lunch look nice as not,” Jean had said, and these were surely a success, for they were both tempting and attractive. All sandwiches were wrapped in waxed tissue paper. Jars of pimento cheese, and olives were opened handily, and there were plenty of Saratoga chips to help out, and some of Aunty Welcome’s famous hermits.

“We’ll keep the fruit until breakfast,” said Miss Murray. “And we’ll probably come to some station where we can buy chocolate, or malted milk. It’s more fun than a dining car, isn’t it?”

“It’s like starting in to camp out, even now,” Polly declared. “And we’ve all got our traveling duties mapped out, too. I’m to look after the twins, and Sue has charge of the old lady. Isabel has been loaning her fan and some magazines to a young girl who is going West for her health. She sits in the last seat on our side, Miss Murray; you can just see her hair as she leans back. How much more entertaining everything is when you forget about yourself, and feel interested in what the rest of the world is doing?”

“Are you just finding that out, Polly?” Jean asked, her gray eyes full of amusement at Polly’s earnestness. “That is only the sweet old motto of ‘noblesse oblige,’ set to modern music. We learn it with our riding out home.”

“Oh, that makes me think of something,” Ted broke in. “Will there be enough ponies for all of us girls, Miss Murray? I mean for us to ride on.”

“I think there surely will be. Father has about six, besides the work horses, and we each have our own pet pony besides. The boys broke theirs in, I know. In Colorado they use the burros for mountain climbing, but our roads are not so rough, at least up around Deercroft. As you travel westward through the Big Horn country, it is very rocky and wild.”

“Doesn’t it seem queer to think we are really on the way there, girls?” Sue sighed, contentedly. “I’m not worried over anything in the world just at this minute except how on earth we are all to sleep on these seats.”

“Six dollars for three berths to-night, and all double up?” Isabel suggested reflectively.

“Now, never mind glancing over the flesh pots of Egypt, Lady Vanitas,” Ruth retorted, placidly. “We will hand that same porter some more quarters, and get pillows and blankets from his private cupboard—”

“Locker,” interrupted Isabel. “I heard him call it that.”

“That is a good plan, Ruth; I’d never thought of it,” Polly exclaimed. “We haven’t six dollars to spend on berths, goose. We’re self-supporting globe trotters now.”

When bedtime came, they watched the preparations of others interestedly. Polly helped put the twins to bed on seats, and even hushed the baby, while the mother got a chance to go and bathe her warm, dusty face. The passengers were settling themselves as comfortably as they could for the night, and good-hearted Ted slipped her pillow to the girl who had been ill.

“I can double up my coat and make a pillow of it,” she explained, when Sue discovered what she had done.

It was not nearly so uncomfortable as they had anticipated. As Polly announced sleepily, “Nothing is ever so bad as you expected it to be, anyway.” They had taken Jean’s advice, and worn pongee silk waists, that hardly showed any creases. Before they knew it, the motion of the train had lulled them all into good healthful slumber.

Jean stayed awake longer than the girls, thinking of the coming vacation on the ranch, and what it would mean to them. What a surprise it would be to Mrs. “Sandy,” when they all rode over to the Alameda ranch to call; girls from her own home town, and Calvert Hall, Virginia. She wondered what Peggie would think of Polly’s merry club—shy, low-voiced Peggie, who was shy even with her own family, and only seemed to feel at ease with dumb animals. Most of all, she thought of her mother, quiet, and gentle like Peggie, but always the one who saw farthest ahead down the trail, as Captain Sandy said. She had assented willingly to the coming of the girls. Practically, it would help Jean, she knew, to have them with her, and financially it would also benefit the ranch where every dollar seemed like five, with the growing brood of hearty youngsters, and never-ending expenses.

“And it will do the poor lassies a deal of good, too, Jeanie,” she had written East, “just to be seeing how people manage to live happily and wholesomely away out here in the hill country. It is not best always to sit on a cushion, and sew a fine seam, and feed upon strawberries, sugar and cream. How you always wanted to be Curly Locks when you were a bairnie, though. And you may be yet. But even if you should you will make a better mother and wife, dear, for having lived here at the Crossbar year after year. Bring your Virginia roses out West here, and we’ll show them prairie flowers, and mountain wild-pinks that God’s hand tends as lovingly as he does his roses.

“I kiss you good-night, daughter.

Sometimes, when Jean read over those home letters, it made her more tender towards Polly, brought up between the Admiral’s happy indulgence and Aunty Welcome’s frantic admonitions. She looked forward with interest and some curiosity to watching the effect of life at the Crossbar on all of the girls, but mostly on Polly herself.