The Story of Dago | Page 4

the holes in my box-lid. I was carried up the steps into the sleeping-car, and for the next quarter of an hour it seemed to me that my box changed position every two minutes. The porter was getting us settled for the night He was about to poke the box that held me under the berth where little Elsie and her nurse were to sleep, when Stuart called him from the berth above, into which he had just climbed. So I was tossed up as if I had been an ordinary piece of baggage, the porter little knowing what was strapped so carefully inside the bandbox.
Doctor Tremont and Phil had the section just across the aisle from ours, and Phil carried his box up the step-ladder himself, and stowed Matches carefully away in one corner before he began to take off his shoes. When the curtains were all drawn and the car-lights turned down low so that every one could sleep, Stuart sat up and began unbuckling the strap around my box. I knew enough to keep still when he took the lid off and gently stroked me. I had no intention of being sent back to the baggage-car, if keeping quiet would help me to escape the conductor's eyes.
Stuart stroked me for a moment, and then, cautiously drawing aside his curtains, thrust his head out and looked up and down the aisle. Everything was quiet. Then he gave the softest kind of a whistle, so faint that it seemed little more than the echo of one; but Phil heard, and instantly his head was poked out between his curtains. Stuart held me up and grinned. Immediately Phil held up Matches and grinned. After a funny pantomime by which, with many laughable gestures, each boy made the other understand that he intended to allow his pet freedom all night, they drew in their heads and lay down.
Stuart wanted me to sleep on the pillow beside him, but I was still sulky, and retired to my box at his feet. In spite of the jar and rumble of the train I slept soundly for a long time. It must have been somewhere about the middle of the night when I was awakened all of a sudden by a fearful crash and the feeling that I was pitching headlong down a frightful precipice.
The next instant I struck the floor with a force that nearly stunned me. When I gathered my wits together I found myself in the middle of the aisle, bruised and sore, with the bandbox on top of me.
We had been going with the usual terrific speed of a fast express, down steep mountain grades, sweeping around dizzy curves, and now we had come to a sudden stop without reason or warning. It gave the train such a tremendous jar that windows rattled, baggage lurched from the racks, the porter sprawled full-length on the floor as I had done, and more than one head was bumped unmercifully against the hard woodwork of the berths. Everybody sprang up to ask what was the matter. Babies cried and women scolded and men swore. All I could do was to whimper with pain and fright until Stuart came scrambling after me. My shoulder was bruised and my head aching, and no one can imagine my terrible fright at such a rude awakening. If I had not been in the box, I might have saved myself when the crash came, but I was powerless to catch at anything when it went bump over on to the floor.
The brakeman and conductor came running in to see what was the matter. Nobody knew why the train had stopped. It was several minutes before they discovered the cause, but I had found out while Stuart was climbing back to bed with me. Swinging by her hands from the bell-rope which ran down the centre of the car, was that miserable little monkey, Matches, making a fool of herself and everybody else. Who but that little imp of mischief would have done such a thing as to get up in the middle of the night and go through a lot of gymnastic exercises on the bell-rope? It was her swinging and jerking on the rope that rang the bell and brought the engine to that sudden stop.
I don't know how the doctor settled it with the conductor. I know that there was a great deal said, and Matches and I were both sent back to the baggage-car. All the rest of the journey I had an aching head and a bruised shoulder to keep me in mind of that hateful little Matches, and I resolved long before we reached home that I would do something to get even with her, before we had lived together a week.
CHAPTER II.
WHAT