After dress parade a certain Major Drew, who knew Mr. Hartley, came up and was duly presented to the ladies. He in turn presented the officer of the day, who looked, to the Happy Hexagons, very handsome and imposing in sword and spurs. After this, at Major Drew's invitation, there was a visit to the officers' quarters, and on the Major's broad gallery there was a cooling refreshment of lemonade and root beer before the drive back to the hotel. CHAPTER XVII "BERTHA'S ACCIDENT" It had been decided that the party would go to New Orleans from San Antonio, and then from there by boat to New York. "It'll make a change from car-riding, and a very pleasant one, I'm thinking," Mr. Hartley had said; and the others had enthusiastically agreed with him. It was on the five-hundred-and-seventy-two mile journey from San Antonio to New Orleans that something happened. In the Chronicles of the Hexagon Club it fell to Genevieve to tell the story; and this is what she wrote: "It seems so strange to me that we should have traveled so many thousands of miles on the railroad without anything happening; and then, just on the last five hundred (we are going to take the boat at New Orleans)--to have it happen. "We have had all sorts of amusing experiences, of course, losing trains, and missing connections; but nothing like this. Even when we had to take that little bumpy accommodation for a few hours, and it was so accommodating it stopped every few minutes 'to water the horses,' as dear Tilly said, nothing happened--though, to be sure, we almost did get left that time we all (except Aunt Julia) got off and went to pick flowers while our train waited for a freight to go by. But we didn't get quite left, and we did catch it. (Dear Tilly says we could have caught it, anyway, even if it had started, and that we shouldn't have had to walk very fast, at that! Tilly does make heaps of fun of all our trains except the fast ones on the main lines. And I don't know as I wonder, only I'd never tell her that, of course--that is, I _wouldn't_ have told her before, perhaps.) "Well, where was I? Oh, I know--on the sidetrack. (I had to laugh here, for it occurred to me that that was just where I was in the story--on a sidetrack! I'm not telling what I started out to tell at all. It's lucky we can each take all the room we want, though, in these Chronicles.) "Well, I'll tell it now, really, though I'm still so shaky and excited my hand trembles awfully. It was in the night, a little past twelve o'clock that it happened. I was lying in my berth above Elsie's, and was wide-awake. I had been thinking about Father. He has been such a dear all the way. I was thinking what a big, big dear he was, when IT happened. "Yes, I put IT in capitals on purpose, and I reckon you would, if suddenly the car you were riding in began to sway horribly and bump up and down, and then stop right off short with a bang that flung you into the middle of the aisle! And that's what ours did.