"Rob! Rob! you must not be so boisterous," exclaimed his mother; but she was laughing as hard as she could laugh, and Rob knew she was not really displeased with him.

"Oh Nell, Nell!" cried Rob, "isn't it splendid? why don't you say any thing?"

"I can't," replied Nelly. But her cheeks were growing redder and redder every minute, and her father saw that tears were coming in her eyes.

"Why, Nell," he said, "you are not sorry, are you? I thought you wanted to go."

"Oh, so I do, papa," exclaimed Nelly; "I want to go so much that I can't believe it."

Mr. March smiled. He understood Nelly better than her mother did.

CHAPTER III

OFF FOR COLORADO

It was finally decided that it would be best not to set out for Colorado until the middle of March. There were many things to be arranged and provided for, and Mr. March did not wish to leave the people of his parish too suddenly. Afterward he wished that he had gone away immediately, as soon as his decision was made; for the ten weeks that he waited were merely ten long weeks of good-bye.

Everybody loved him, and was sorry he was going; and there was not a day that somebody did not come in to hear the whole story over again, why he was going, when he was going, where he was going, and all about it. At last Mrs. March grew so tired of talking it all over and over, that she said to people: "I really can't talk any more about it. We are not going till the fifteenth of March, but I wish it were to-morrow." After the first two or three weeks, Rob and Nelly lost much of their interest in talking it over; two months ahead seemed to them just as far off as two years; and they did not more than half believe they would ever really go. But when the packing began, all their old interest and enthusiasm returned, and they could not keep quiet a moment. Nelly's great anxiety was to decide whether she would better carry Mrs. Napoleon in her arms all the way or let her go in a trunk. She said to her mother that she really thought Mrs. Napoleon would go safer in her arms than anywhere else. "You see, mamma, I should never lay her down a single minute, and how could any thing happen to her then? But in the trunk she would be shaken and jolted all the time." The truth was, Nelly was very proud of Mrs. Napoleon, and she secretly had thought to herself, "I expect there'll be a great many little girls in the cars: in four whole days, there must be; and they would all like to see such a beautiful doll."

Mrs. March understood this feeling in Nelly perfectly well, and it amused her very much to see how Nelly was trying to deceive herself about it.

"But, Nelly," she said, "the cars will be full of cinders and dust, and they will be sure to stick to the wax. Her face would get dirty in a single day, and you can't wash it as you do Pocahontas's. Don't you think you'd better carry Pocahontas instead?"

Pocahontas was Nelly's next best doll: she was the big one I told you about; the one that was almost the size of a real live baby; the one which was so big that it made Mrs. March first think of using her father's great stockings to hang up for Christmas stockings for the children.

"Oh, mamma!" said Nelly: "Pocahontas is too heavy; and I don't care half so much for her as for dear beautiful Josephine. I shouldn't care very much if Pocahontas did get broken, but if any thing were to happen to the Empress it would be dreadful. Do let me carry her, mamma. I'll make her a beautiful waterproof cloak just like mine; and she can wear two veils just as you do on the water."

"Very well, Nelly, you can do as you like," replied her mother; "but I warn you that you will wish the doll out of the way a great many times before we reach our journey's end; and I am afraid her looks will be entirely spoiled."

"Oh, no, mamma!" replied Nelly, confidently. "You'll see you haven't the least idea what good care I shall take of her."

At last the day came when the last box was shut and nailed and corded, the last leather bag locked, the last bundle rolled up and strapped; and Mr. and Mrs. March, and Rob and Nelly, and little Deacon Plummer and his good little wife, all stood on the doorsteps of the parsonage waiting for the stage, which was to carry them ten miles to the railway station where they were to take the cars. Mrs.

Napoleon really looked very pretty in her long waterproof cloak; it was of bright blue lined with scarlet; and she wore a dark blue hat with a little bit of scarlet feather in it, to match her cloak; and she had a dark blue veil, two thicknesses of it, pinned very tight over her face and hat; Nelly held her hugged tight in her arms, and never put her down.

"Oh, my! before I'd be bothered with a doll to carry," exclaimed Rob, looking at Nelly,--"leave her behind. Give her to Mary Pratt.

You won't care for dolls out in Colorado. I know you won't."

Nelly gave Rob a look which would have melted the heart of an older boy; but Rob was not to be melted.

"Oh, you needn't look that way!" he said. "A doll's a plague: I heard mamma tell you so too, so now, there," he added triumphantly.

Nelly walked away in silence, and only hugged Mrs. Napoleon tighter, and Mr. March, who had been watching the scene, said to his wife: "Look at that motherly little thing. The doll's the same to her as a baby to you."

"Yes," said Mrs. March, "but Rob's right after all. It'll be a great bother having that wax doll along; but I thought it was better to let Nelly see for herself. I dare say she'll forget it, and leave it at the first place where we change cars."

"Not she," said Mr. March. "You don't know Nelly half so well as I do, Sarah, if she is your own child. Nelly'd carry that doll round the world and never lay it down."

"We'll see," said Mrs. March, laughing. Mr. March was a little vexed at his wife for saying this; and he privately resolved that he would keep an eye on Mrs. Napoleon himself all through the journey, and see that she was not left behind at any station.

Four days and four nights in the cars, going, going, going every minute, night and day, dark and light, asleep and awake: n.o.body has any idea what such a journey is till he takes it. Poor old Deacon Plummer and Mrs. Plummer were so tired by the end of the second day that they looked about ninety years old.

"Deary me!" Mrs. Plummer said a dozen times a day. "It's a great deal farther than I thought."

"I told you, Elizy, it was four days and four nights," the Deacon always replied; "but I suppose you didn't sense it no more'n I did.

n.o.body couldn't believe the joltin' 'd be so wearin'. I feel's if my bones was all jelly in my skin," and the poor old man moved as if they were. He reeled when he walked; and, at each lurch the cars gave, he would catch hold of anything or anybody who happened to be near him. If it were a person, he would apologize most humbly: but if the car gave another lurch, even while he was apologizing, he would catch hold again, just as hard as before, at which the person would walk away quite offended; and very soon everybody in the car tried to keep out of the old man's way, they were so afraid of being violently laid hold of by him.

Rob and Nelly did not mind the jolting; did not mind the lurches the cars gave; did not mind the cinders, the dust, the noise. They were having the best time they ever had in their lives. For the first two days of their journey, they were in what is called "The drawing-room," in the sleeping-car. I wonder if I could make those of you who have never been in a sleeping-car understand about this little room. I will try.

Most of the sleeping-cars have merely shelves along the sides in the place where the seats are in the ordinary day-cars: curtains are hung in front of these shelves, and they are parted off from each other like the shelves in a long cupboard. In the daytime, these shelves are folded away and fastened up against the walls, and seats left below them. At night when people are ready to go to bed, the shelves are let down, and the curtains put up in front of them, and each person climbs up on his shelf, and undresses behind the curtain, and goes to bed. I forgot to say that a very good little bed is made up on each shelf. A man who has the care of the car, and who is called the porter, makes these beds. This is the way it is in nearly all the sleeping-cars. But there are some cars which have, besides these, a nice little room walled off at one end. It has seats for two people on each side; and these seats are made into comfortable beds at night. It has two windows which open on the outside of the car, and two which open on the narrow aisle of the car; these four windows are all your own, if you have hired the whole little room for yourself. You can have them either open or shut, just as you like, and n.o.body else has any right to say any thing about it, which is a great comfort; in the ordinary car, you know there is always somebody just behind you or just before you who is either too hot or too cold, and wants the windows shut when you want them open, or open when you want them shut. This little room has a door at each end of it. One opens into the car where the rest of the people are sitting. The other opens into a nice little closet where there is a washbowl and water, and you can take a bath comfortably. At night the porter comes and hangs up curtains across these doors, because they have gla.s.s in the tops of them; then he draws the curtains at your windows; then he lights a lamp which hangs in the middle of the ceiling in your room: and there you are shut up in as cunning a little bedroom as you would ever want to see; and almost as snug and private as you could be in your own bedroom. You can undress and go to bed comfortably; and, unless the jolting of the car keeps you awake, you can sleep all night as soundly as you would at home.

Rob and Nelly were delighted with this little room. So was Mrs.

March. She hung up their cloaks and hats on the hooks, and took out their books and papers, and made the little room look like home.

Nelly propped Mrs. Napoleon up in one corner of one of the red velvet arm-chairs, and took off her blue veils, for there seemed to be no dust at all.

"I wish I'd brought Pocahontas too," said Nelly: "there is so much room, and dolls do look so nice travelling like other people."

"People!" laughed Rob. "Dolls ain't people."

"They are too," said Nelly. "People are men and women, and there are boy dolls and girl dolls and women dolls and men dolls."

"Mamma, are dolls people?" asked Rob, vehemently. "Nell says they are, and I say they ain't. They ain't: are they?"

"Not live people," said Mrs. March: "Nell didn't mean that."

"Oh, no!" said Nelly; "but they're play people, and you can't be sure they don't know any thing just because they don't speak. I could go a whole year without speaking if I tried to."

"I believe you could," laughed Mrs. March; "but Rob couldn't."

"Not I," said Rob. "What's the use? I like to talk. Nell's a dumb-cat: that's what she is."

"I can talk if I've a mind to," retorted Nelly; "but I don't want to; that is, not very often: I don't see the use in it."

This is the way it always was with Rob and Nelly. Dearly as they loved each other, they never thought alike about any thing: but for that very reason they did each other good; much more than if they had been just alike.

When it was time for breakfast or for dinner, the black porter, whose name was Charley, brought in a little square table and set it up as firm as he could between the seats. Then Mr. March lifted up the big luncheon-basket on one of the chairs, and Mrs. March took out her spirit-lamp, and they had great fun cooking. There was a saucepan which fitted over the spirit-lamp, and the flame of the spirit-lamp was so large that water boiled in this saucepan in a very few minutes. Mrs. March could make tea or chocolate or coffee: she could boil eggs, or warm up beef soup; then, after they had eaten all they wanted, they heated more water in the same saucepan and washed their dishes in it. At first, this seemed dreadful to Nelly, who was a very neat little girl.

"Oh, mamma," she said, "how horrid to cook in the same pan you wash dishes in!" But Mrs. March laughed at her, and told her that when people were travelling they could not afford to be so particular.

It was only for the first two days and nights of their journey that they had this comfortable little room. On the morning of the third day they reached Kansas City, and there they had to change cars.

They sat in a large and crowded waiting-room, while Mr. March went to see about the tickets. Nelly and Rob looked with great astonishment on every thing they saw. They seemed already to have come into a new world. The people looked strange, and a great many of them were speaking German. There were whole families--father, mother, and perhaps half-a-dozen little children--sitting on the railway platforms, on big chests, which were tied up with strong ropes. They had great feather-beds, too, tied in bundles and bulging out all round the ropes. Their faces were very red, and their clothes were old and patched: if Nelly had met them in the lanes of Mayfield, she would have taken them for beggars; but here they were travelling just like herself, going the same way too, for she watched several of them getting into the same train. Then there were groups of men in leather clothes, with their boots reaching up to their knees, and powder-horns slung across their shoulders. They all carried rifles: some of them had two or three; and one of them, as he stepped on the platform, threw down a dead deer; another carried a splendid pair of antlers. Nelly took hold of Rob's hand and walked very cautiously nearer the dead deer.

"Oh, Rob!" she said, "it's a real deer. There is a picture of one in my Geography with just such horns as these."

Nelly was carrying Mrs. Napoleon hugged up very tight in her arms; but she had not observed that, in the jostling of the crowd, Mrs.

Napoleon had somehow turned her head round as if she were looking backward over Nelly's shoulder. Neither had she observed that two little girls were following closely behind her, jabbering German as fast as they could, and pointing to the doll. Presently, she felt her gown pulled gently. She turned round, and there were the two little girls, both with outstretched hands, talking as fast as magpies, and much more unintelligibly. Each of them took hold of Nelly's gown again, and made signs to her that she should let them take the doll. They looked so eager that it seemed as if they would s.n.a.t.c.h the doll out of her hands: the words they spoke sounded so thick and strange that it half frightened Nelly. "Oh, dear me, Rob!"

she exclaimed; "do tell them to go away. Go away, good little girls, go away!" she said, pleadingly. "I can't let you take her."