"Yes," said Mrs. March. "You are to sleep with me, and Rob with papa; and we'll be all shut in behind the curtains. I think that will be quite comfortable."

When the train stopped for the pa.s.sengers to take supper, Mr. and Mrs. March decided that they would go out too, and not try any more experiments with the spirit-lamp while they had such dangerous and disagreeable companions in the next seat.

Nelly and Rob clung to their father's hand as they entered the eating-room. There were four long tables, all filled with people eating as fast as they could eat. Nearly all the men had their hats on their heads, and the noise of the knives and forks sounded like the clatter of machinery. The train was to stop only twenty minutes, and everybody was trying to eat all he could in so short a time. Mr.

and Mrs. March, being very gentle and quiet people, did not hurry the waiters as the other people did; and so it happened that their supper was not brought to them for some time. Nelly had eaten only a few mouthfuls of her bread and milk when there was a general rush from all the tables, and the room was emptied in a minute. The conductor of the train was sitting at the table with the Marches, and he said kindly to them:--

"Don't hurry; there is plenty of time; five minutes yet."

"Five minutes!" said Rob, scornfully: "I couldn't take five mouthfuls in five minutes. I'm going to carry mine into the cars."

And he began spreading bread and b.u.t.ter.

"A good idea, Rob," said his mother. And she did the same thing; and, as the conductor called "All aboard!" the March family entered the car, each carrying two slices of bread and b.u.t.ter.

"Not much better luck with our supper than with our dinner, Sarah,"

said Mr. March; "I think you'll have to open your lunch-basket, after all."

"Oh, don't ask me to!" said Mrs. March. "The children have had a good drink of milk. We can get along till morning. I would rather go hungry than take out the things with all those people looking on. We can go to bed early: that will be a comfort."

Mistaken Mrs. March! They sat on the steps of the cars for half an hour to watch the sunset. The brakeman had found out that Mr. March was so careful and Nelly and Rob were such good children that he let them sit there as often as they liked. Nelly loved dearly to sit between her father's knees on the upper step and look down at the ground as it seemed to fly away so swiftly under the wheels.

Sometimes they went so fast that the ground did not look like ground at all. It looked like a smooth, striped sheet of brown and green paper being drawn swiftly under the car wheels. It seemed to Rob and Nelly as if they must be going out over the edge of the world. All they could see was sky and ground.

"This is the way it looks when you are out in the middle of the ocean, Nell," said her father; "just the great round sky over your head, and the great flat sea underneath: only the sea is never still as the ground is; that is the only difference."

"Still!" cried Rob. "You don't call this ground under us still, do you? It's going as fast as lightning all the time."

"No, Rob! it is we who are going; the ground is still," said his mother; "but it does look just as if the ground were flying one way and we the other. It makes me almost dizzy to look down."

Pretty soon the moon came up in the east. It was almost full, and, as it came up slowly in sight, it looked like a great circle of fire. Rob and Nelly both cried out, when they first saw it:--

"Oh, mamma! oh, papa! see that fire!"

In a very few minutes it was up in full sight, and then they saw what it was.

"Dear me! only the moon, after all," said Rob; "I hoped it was a big fire."

CHAPTER IV

A NIGHT IN A SLEEPING-CAR

The moonlight was so beautiful that Mrs. March did not like to go back into the car; and Rob and Nelly begged so hard to sit up, that she let them stay long past their bedtime. At last she exclaimed:--

"Come, come! this won't do! We must go to bed," and she opened the car door. As soon as she looked in she started back, so that she nearly knocked Mr. March and Nelly off the platform.

"Why, what has happened?" she said.

Mr. March laughed.

"Oh, nothing," he said: "this is the way a sleeping-car always looks at night."

Curtains were let down on each side the aisle its whole length. It was very dark, and the aisle looked very narrow. Not a human being was in sight.

"Where are our sections?" said Mrs. March.

"These are ours, I think," said Mr. March, pulling open a curtain on the left.

"Let my curtain alone," called somebody from inside, "Go away."

Mr. March had opened the wrong curtain.

"Oh, I beg your pardon, madam," he said, much mortified that he should have broken open a lady's bedroom.

Mrs. March and Rob and Nelly stood close together in the middle of the aisle, at their wits' end. They did not dare to open another curtain, for fear it should be somebody's else bedroom, and not their own.

"I'll call Ben," said Mr. March; "he'll know."

But Ben was nowhere to be found. At last they found him sound asleep in a little state-room at the end of the car.

"Ben, come show us which are our sections," said Mr. March.

Ben was very sleepy. He came stumbling down the aisle, rubbing his eyes.

"Reckon there is your berths; I made 'em up all ready for you," said Ben, and pulled open the very curtain Mr. March had opened before.

"Oh! don't open that one; there's a lady in there," cried Mrs.

March; but she was too late. Ben had thrown the curtains wide open.

The same angry voice as before called out:--

"I wish you'd let my curtain alone. What are you about?"

"Done made a mistake this time, sure," said Ben, composedly drawing the curtains together again; but not before Mrs. March and Nelly and Rob had had time to see into the bed, and had seen that it held the mother with five children. There they all lay as snug as you please: the three little ones packed like herrings in a box, across the foot of the bed, and the two others on the inside; and the mother lying on the outer edge almost in the aisle. As Ben pushed back the curtains, she muttered:--

"There ain't any room to spare in this berth, if that's what you're looking for."

Rob and Nelly gave a smothered laugh at this.

"Hush, children!" whispered Mrs. March. "You wouldn't like to be laughed at."

"Oh, mamma, it's so funny!" said Rob. "We can't help it."

Mrs. March did not think it funny at all. She began to be in despair about the night.

The very next section to the one with the five children was one of Mr. March's, and luckily those were the next curtains Ben opened.