was off. I trusted Ermyntrude was safe on board, but I couldn't get near enough to a window to put my head out, so I had to content myself with the hope. Ermyntrude left behind on the Bandalnugger railway platform was too awful a catastrophe to contemplate.
Berengaria stood by the door, surveying the medley of luggage that filled the carriage with the air of a conquerer surveying a fallen city. Then her eyes fell on the nearer of the two forms tucked up in bed.
'Why, it's Mrs. Croydon,' she exclaimed. Then I knew what Berengaria had meant. I saw the tact and the smile at the same time. It must have been horribly annoying to be awakened like that in the middle of a cold winter's night. Yet Mrs. Croydon smiled. She seemed to take a real personal interest in us both straight away.
'The question is,' she said, after the first preliminary greetings which had envolved an introduction to myself were over, 'how are you going to get to bed?'
We all laughed. I was at one end of the carriage and Berengaria was at the other. A medley of trunks and boxes rose up like a rugged range of hills between us. Bitterly cold as it was, Mrs. Croydon even got up and helped us to clear the floor a bit. She came to my rescue as I struggled with the upper berth, which I tried in vain to lower—it's really quite an art to do it if you are not particularly strong and there happens to be a sleeping form on the berth below. The woman on that lower berth
