of you for picking up my things."
Her timidity seemed to disappear as she realized she was making friends. As for me, I have never known what it was to be timid, and I felt at home with the three Tuckers from the moment they entered the waiting room; and from the time that Mr. Tucker and I bumped heads, I counted them as the first three on the list of the million friends that Cousin Sue said I must make.
"Well, since we are all going to Gresham, suppose you young ladies hand over your tickets to me and I will be courier for the crowd," said Mr. Tucker.
I gave him my ticket, also my reservation in the parlor car. It made no difference how poor payments were, Father and I always traveled in comfort. "It saves in the end to ride in a clean, comfortable coach," Father declared. "Saves wear and tear on clothes and nerves."
Annie Pore handed him her rumpled ticket.
"This is all you have?" he asked.
"Oh, yes, isn't that all right?" she entreated. "The man at the ticket window assured me it was right."
"Of course it is all right. Now there are five minutes before the train will be called, so if you young ladies will excuse me, I'll run downstairs to see that Tweedles' trunks are safe. By the way, have you attended to your luggage?" he asked me. "And you?" turning to Annie Pore.
"Thank you, yes," I answered; but the other girl looked piteously at her bursting telescope. "I haven't a trunk," she said simply.
I felt mighty sorry for Annie. The Tucker twins did, too. I could tell by their eyes. Dee's filled and Dum turned and walked to the steps with her father.
Dee whispered to me as she pretended to show me a picture in "Life":
"He's gone to get her a ticket in the parlor car. Just like him! Such a thoughtful Zebedee as he is! We mustn't let him know we are on. That would make him raging. He will carry it off perfectly naturally, and he is fully capable of any deceit to keep Annie Pore from finding it out."
He had done exactly as Dee said he would do: got a chair in the parlor car for "Orphan Annie." Right there I took myself to task for thinking of the poor girl as "Orphan Annie," and I determined to control my thoughts if possible and give her her proper name in my mind. Not that Annie Pore sounded much more cheerful than the name I had given her.
Our train was called and our kind courier bundled up bag and baggage and hustled us through the gates and into the chair car before Annie Pore had time to ask about it; and then he gave the Pullman conductor our tickets and settled us and the train started, and the girl never did know she was being treated to a privilege her ticket did not give her.
We had a jolly trip and before it was over I knew a great deal about the Tuckers, and they, in turn, a great deal about me, in fact, about all there was to know. It was many a day, however, before we broke through Annie Pore's reserve and learned that she was of English parentage, that her mother had recently died and her father had a country store in a lonesome little settlement on the river. No wonder the girl was so scary. This was actually her first railroad journey. What traveling she had done had been by boat, an occasional trip to Norfolk or Richmond when her father went to town to buy his stock.
There was an unmistakable air of breeding about her. Her accent was pure and her English without flaw. In spite of her timidity, she had a certain savoir faire. For instance, when Mr. Tucker announced that we were to have lunch with him and ordered the porter to bring two tables and put them up, Annie accepted the invitation with a quiet grace that many a society woman could not have equaled. When she took off her ugly hat, disclosing to view a calm white forehead with heavy, ripe-wheat hair rippling from a part, I had no doubt of the fact that Annie Pore, if not already a beauty, was going to be one when she grew up.
It was only a buffet luncheon and there was not much on the menu to choose from: baked beans, canned soup, potted meats, etc.
"Not much to eat here," grumbled Mr. Tucker.
"Eat what's put before you, Zebedee, and stop grouching," admonished Dum.
"Well, it's a pretty hard state of affairs when a fellow wants to give a party and there is nothing to eat but these canned abominations."
"I have a lunch box in my grip," I ventured; "maybe that would help out some."
"Trot it out, do!" cried Dee.
And then Annie had the hardihood to untie the rope around her telescope and bring out a bag of the very best and rosiest wine-sap apples I ever tasted. She also produced a box of doughnuts she had made herself which were greeted with enthusiasm. My lunch had been put up by kind old Mammy Susan, and in her tenderness she had packed in enough to feed a regiment.
"Fried chicken!" exclaimed Dee, clapping her hands.
"Columbus eggs!" shouted Dum.
"Not really country ham?" questioned Mr. Tucker. "That is too good to be true. You must excuse Tweedles and me, but we have been living in an apartment and eating in the café, and some real home food has just about got us going. When I asked you young ladies to lunch, I did not dream that I would be able to treat you so royally."
"Look, Zebedee, look! Clover-leaf rolls!" chorused the twins.
"Stop tweedling and look over the menu and see what we shall order to supplement with." Mr. Tucker called it tweedling when the girls spoke in chorus as was their habit.
We decided on cream of tomato soup, iced tea and butter, with Neopolitan ice cream to top off with. I was certainly glad that, as usual, Mammy Susan had paid no attention to my commands, and had done her own sweet will in giving me enough lunch for half a dozen girls.
"It's bes' to err on de side er plenty, honey baby," the old woman had said when I demurred at the size of the lunch boxes. "Even ef you is goin' to a land flowin' wif milk an' honey, a few rolls to sop in de honey won't go amiss an' some chicken an' ham to wash down wif de milk won't hurt none."
CHAPTER III.
GRESHAM
Gresham at last after a very pleasant trip! We had picked up blue-coated girls all along the road, and by the time we reached the little town on the outskirts of which our school was situated, the train seemed to be running over with girls.
"There must be a million of them," I thought; but as Gresham could only accommodate one hundred and twenty-five, I was wrong. Some of them had mothers or fathers with them, and some of them big brothers or sisters. Most of them had some one; at least, most of the new girls.
The old pupils hugged and kissed one another and all seemed to be glad to get back to school. The new girls looked sad and miserable, even the ones who had their mothers with them. And a few lonesome ones who had brought themselves, like "Orphan Annie" (there, I slipped again and called Annie Pore by that obnoxious name!) or me, looked like scared rabbits. I wasn't scared a bit, and when I saw the old girls hugging and loving one another, flaunting their intimacies, as it were, I said:
"Don't you mind, Page Allison. You are going to know all of those girls and like a lot of them, and a lot of them are going to like you; and they are just a few of the million friends you are going to make."
In the crowded confusion at the little station, I was separated from the Tuckers and noticed that poor Annie was put in a bus filled with Seniors, who looked at her rather askance. Her ungainly telescope was piled up with the natty suitcases by the driver's seat, and I saw him point at it and wink at the driver of the bus where I had found a seat.
The
