It turned out that she was to go to her Uncle Jonas, and that Mr.
Sanders had come after her; and then, my goodness gracious! she was so
full of anticipation and joy that she was frightened for herself. The
kind ladies who had had charge of her told her not to be frightened, and
to be very good, but she just rolled her big blue eyes, and had long,
long thoughts about things of which she never breathed a word. She
started at last, and went with Mr. Sanders on the choo-choo train, and
such a time as the two had buying tickets to Malvern, and laughing at
the people they saw, and getting their baggage checked, and getting on
the train, and watching the station slide back away from them so they
could get a good start--such a time has hardly been repeated for anybody
from that day to this.
A man caught a cinder in his eye, and ran with such speed to the
water-cooler that he turned the whole thing over; and it came down with
such a crash that everybody was frightened except Mr. Sanders and
Adelaide. Women screamed, babies squalled, and all the time the cinder
man was saying things under his breath, and some of them sounded to
Adelaide like the words that her good friend, the Peskerwhalian Bishop,
used in his sermon, only they were not so fierce and emphatic. The child
glanced around, and remarked with a satisfied smile: "It didn't scare
Cally-Lou." "I reckon not," Mr. Sanders remarked, although he had no
idea what Adelaide meant.
Well, they reached Malvern in due time, and there, right at the station,
was the stage-coach, which was driven by John Bell. Mr. Sanders
introduced Adelaide to the driver, who took off his hat and bowed very
gravely, and after that it was only a few minutes before they were on
their way to Shady Dale. If the choo-choo train had been fine, the
stage-coach was finer; it was like getting in a swing and staying there
a long time. There were a few passengers in the coach, and they all
appeared to be very sleepy. When they nodded, as the most of them did,
they fell about somewhat promiscuously--though Adelaide didn't think of
that word--and made it somewhat uncomfortable for the child, who was
wide awake and alert. But when they came to the place where the horses
were watered, John Bell leaned from his seat, and saw at a glance what
Adelaide's trouble was. In a jiffy he had her up on the swaying seat
beside him. It would have been a frightful position for most children,
but Adelaide thought it was the grandest thing in the world. She was
seated almost directly above the two wheel horses, and not very far from
the leaders. She could see their muscles rise and fall as they whirled
the coach along; she could see the flecks of foam made by the harness,
and--well, it was just glorious! She had what Mr. Sanders called the
Christmas feeling--the feeling that is ever ready to become awe or
delight--and the swing of the stage-coach kept her alternating between
the two.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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