The Story of Dago | Page 4

away.
I shrieked and chattered with rage, but no one paid any attention to me.
I was obliged to settle down in my box in sulky silence. In a little while
I could feel myself being carried down the porch steps. Then the
carriage door slammed and we jolted along in the dark for a long time. I
knew when we reached the depot by the bright light streaming through
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