CHAPTER VII—LOST—A GIRL

“What a wonderful sleep!” Jane was just stretching out in her bunk. “I suppose Judy is up and dressed, and interviewing the crew.” She pulled the little window curtain back cautiously, and sent her half-opened eyes after the fleeting landscape. “And a lovely day. I am glad of that, for even in a train one enjoys fresh, clean weather.” She slipped into the dark blue travelling kimono, and slippers to match, in which Jane might make her way to the dressing room without attracting undue attention. Thus attired she put her hand up to give the curtain of the upper, Judy’s berth, a signal yank.

“Judith,” she called lightly. “Are you up, Judith?”

No answer. Her chum was, she presumed, dressed and out for exercise. With the convenient little dressing bag Jane hurried off to make her day’s toilette, being assured she would meet Judith either on the way to, or in the ladies’ room.

But Judith was not in sight, neither along the way nor in the dressing-room. Jane made her toilette in haste, and thus refreshed from the “wonderful sleep” polished off with accessories of the best travelling comforts, she stepped from the compartment.

“Where can Judy be?” she asked herself in some anxiety. Then the entire length of the coach was covered, to make sure the girl had not buried herself deep in a seat beside some new-found acquaintance. But no Judy was to be sighted.

Jane returned to her berth and signalled the porter he might “make it up.” At an opportune moment she asked him had he seen her friend.

“No, Miss, that is, not since quite early. She went out to the observation, but I saw her come back. No one out there now,” replied the white-linened porter.

The thought of the observation car, with its open-end vestibule gave Jane a little shiver. Of course Judith was accustomed to travel. Nothing could happen to her. Still, where was she?

“I’ll take another look in the observation,” she remarked. “I fancy she might like to see early morning developing.” And Jane left the porter with his tasks.

It seemed everyone was passing into their breakfast with that avidity so marked in hotels and “en routes,” when people have so little to think of except eating, drinking and sleeping. Jane felt the call of an appetite herself, but had no thought of going to breakfast without Judith. Where could the girl be? Each probable rendezvous uncovered negatively, added to Jane’s momentarily increasing anxiety.

“Strange!” she commented. “Judy is always ready to exchange notes in the morning. She would hardly undertake anything so absorbing as to keep her away all this time. Besides, what could she find engrossing on this Limited?”

Finally realizing she could not find her chum, she sought out her faithful porter. Not delaying to ring the bell, Jane looked about and soon found Alfred (this was his name she overheard) arranging cushions on the rear sofa, for a baby to rest there.

“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 assured 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 assuredly 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 assured 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 cushioned 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 embarrassed 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?

“A good thing they had to—fast a little,” Jane whispered in Judith’s ear. “It won’t hurt them any. They smoke enough now to fumigate the car with the fumes they carry out of that room. Pretty room, isn’t it?” She smiled to give back Judith’s assurance.

“Oh, I am so embarrassed,” murmured Judith. “And have I actually been sleeping there, and keeping that raft of men outside?”

“Oh, yes, dear, but that is nothing to worry about,” the kind-hearted Jane protested. “In war times they had to go without smoking or should have. Now they can’t seem to live a moment on the train, without the company of their cigars. Do let us hurry in to breakfast!”

But even the reliable good nature and love of humor, characteristic of Judith was some time in returning to the very much embarrassed girl.