She was also rather thankful that this day's journey was nearly over.
She seemed to have sat still for such a long, long time. Mrs. Tresham
had broken it a little for herself by going to the restaurant-car for
lunch; but though she had pressed Joey most kindly to come with her
as her guest, explaining that she hated meals alone, Joey stuck to it
firmly that she preferred sandwiches, having her own private supply of
family pride. She ate her sandwiches--potted shrimp and margarine--and
the buns and the apples in solitude; they didn't take long--nothing
like as long as Mrs. Tresham's lunch did.
The afternoon was very long, but tea-time came at last, and she had
been told to have tea in the restaurant-car. She and Mrs. Tresham had
it together, at a little table, fixed firmly to the floor; and there
was hot, buttered toast and a sort of mongrel jam, and you had to pour
the tea carefully because of the lurches of the train. Joey enjoyed
that meal, and it was five o'clock by the time it was finished, and she
and Mrs. Tresham had reeled back along the swaying corridor to their
own compartment; and at six they were due at Edinburgh.
Joey tidied herself up and washed her hands even before the Forth
Bridge was reached; she was so anxious to be ready in good time. And
that wonderful engineering feat was crossed--with a certain thrilling
and delightful sense of insecurity about the crossing--and Corstorphine
Hill was passed, and the train was slipping into the Waverley Station.
Edinburgh at last!
Joey was in the corridor in a second, looking for Miss Craigie. Of
course it was not wonderful that she did not see her at once; the
station was so big and the people so many. But even when she had got
out, accompanied by the small suit-case containing her night-things,
and by her new umbrella, and had stood quite a long time waiting and
tiptoeing by the door of the compartment while Mrs. Tresham claimed the
luggage for them both, still there was no sign of anyone who looked
like Mr. Craigie's sister.
A stout, elderly woman stood at a little distance among the
fast-thinning crowd surveying her unblinkingly, but Joey was sure that
_could not_ be Miss Craigie. Just as Mrs. Tresham came back with the
luggage and a porter, this personage moved forward and spoke to Joey
with distinct caution. "I'm thinking you might be perhaps Miss Jocelyn
Graham?"
"Yes, I am," Joey confessed, staring.
The stout woman became less cautious, and more communicative.
"As am own husband's cousin to Maggie M'Tulloch, and when she telled me
of Miss Craigie being down, puir body, wi' the influenzy, and the young
leddy not to gang near the hoose for fear o' carrying the infection to
her braw new schule...."
"Oh, is Miss Craigie ill? I _am_ sorry," Joey cried out.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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