ack, I wanted to get as far away from them
as I could before they discovered that I had gone.

I was horrified to find when we arrived that--as the Americans
say--there was "nothing doing," not a soul in sight, and there I was,
very hot and hysterical, with Vivace and my dressing bag looking like
an escaped burglaress. I had been so nervous while I was packing, that
I'd been afraid of everything, even the soap in the soap dish, which
had two great blinking bubbles at one end, like a pair of goblin eyes
that watched me move, but I was much worse now, and I could have fallen
on the neck of the first official person I saw moving about the station
after I had waited for perhaps a quarter of an hour. I don't know what
he was, but when I appealed to him for news of a train for New York,
instead of calling the police to give Vivace and me in charge as a
dangerous pair, he scratched his head and said there was a milk train
due presently, if I was mighty anxious.

A milk train sounded innocent and suitable to a girl travelling alone,
but even if it hadn't I should have been thankful to go in it. I
couldn't buy a ticket, it appeared, in the ordinary way; but when the
milk train came my man introduced me to another. Perhaps he was a
milkman; anyway he seemed to have authority, and he said as a favour
Vivace and I could be taken. He was a nice person, and he talked a
great deal after the train had given several false starts and at last
had got off. I sat on my bag, as I had on the docks, in a bare, curious
car, which really belonged to the milk, and sometimes when we bumped I
should have fallen on the floor if it hadn't been for him. He told me
all about himself, and wanted to be told all about me, but I thought,
nice as he was, it would be safer not. He asked leading questions which
it was hard to keep from answering, unless I hurt his feelings; but I
think he somehow got the impression that I was going to see a sick
relative, though I never exactly said so.

I don't know what time I should have got to New York if I had had to
travel all the way with the milk, for milk it seems objects to speed;
but after we had jogged along for a couple of hours, we crawled into a
station where a real train was ready to start. There were just five
minutes to say farewell to my friend, and buy a ticket, when all
flushed and panting, I found myself and Vivace and the bag, in a car
different from any I had seen yet. It had no nice easy chairs and