Nelly's Silver Mine: A Story of Colorado LifeJackson, Helen Hunt
History
Nelly's Silver Mine: A Story of Colorado Life
Jackson, Helen Hunt
Colorado -- History -- To 1876 -- Juvenile fiction
At last the train moved off, and the different families arranged
themselves in their own sections, and it seemed a little less
crowded. But there were not seats enough for all the children, and
some of them were obliged to sit on the floor in the middle of the
aisle. The lady who had five children had only engaged one berth:
that is half of a section.
"How do you expect to manage about sleeping?" said Mrs. March to
her.
"Oh, that's easy enough," said she. "We've slept so all the way from
New York. I put the three little ones crosswise at the foot, and the
two others lie 'longside of me."
Mrs. March did not reply to this; but she thought to herself, "I'd
like to see those babies after they are all packed away for the
night."
At noon the train stopped for the passengers to take their dinner at
a little station. More than half the people in the car went out.
Then the porter--the new porter's name was Ben--brought in little
tables and put them up between the seats for the people who had
their own lunch-baskets and did not want to go out to dinner. In the
next section to the Marches were a man and his wife with three
children. They had a big coffee-pot full of coffee, and one tin cup
to drink it from. They had loaves of brown bread, a big cheese, and
a bunch of onions. As soon as they opened their basket, the smell of
the onions and the cheese filled the car.
"Ugh!" said Rob; "where does this horrible smell come from?"
Luckily the people who owned the cheese and the onions did not hear
him, and before he had time to say any more, his mother whispered to
him to be quiet; but Rob's face was one of such disgust, that nobody
could have looked at him without seeing that he was very
uncomfortable. Mrs. March felt as uncomfortable as Rob did: but she
knew that those people had just the same right to have cheese and
onions on their table that she had to have chocolate and orange
marmalade on hers; so she opened one of the windows wide to let in
fresh air, and went on with her dinner. As soon as the spirit-lamp
began to burn, the children in the next section exclaimed aloud:
"Oh, what is that? what is that?" They had never seen any thing of
the kind before. The two eldest, who were boys, jumped down from
their seat, each carrying a big piece of bread and of cheese, and
came crowding around Mrs. March to look at the lamp. Mrs. March was
a very gentle and polite woman, but she could not help being vexed
at these ill-mannered children.
"Go away, little boys," she said: "I am very busy now. I am afraid
you will upset the lamp, and get burned."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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