Dorothy Eden Read Online Free PDF

charge of them, after talking emphatically to an ever-growing group of railway officials, at last shrugged their shoulders fatalistically and herded the children on board.
    Kate, with her passports, baggage and her small travelling companion safely passed by the Customs, found their two-berth sleeping compartment and went into it thankfully. Francesca by this time was more than three parts asleep. Kate produced the bread and the cheese she had bought at Milan, anticipating the child’s inability to stay awake for late dinner in the restaurant car, but even these Francesca was too tired to cope with. She gnawed at the bread for a while, then yawned widely and clambered into her bunk.
    “Oh, not in your dress!” exclaimed Kate. “If you sleep in that it will be quite ruined.”
    But her endeavours to make the sleep-drunk child sit up and be divested of the now sadly crushed organdie were useless. She did not intend to have her dress removed. Either she was genuinely asleep or she was foxing, and Kate was even less able to cope with her stubbornness than the absent Gianetta had been.
    Actually, she didn’t think Francesca was foxing, for her doll, Pepita, lay forgotten beside her, and she had the gnawed piece of bread still clutched in her hand. She was just worn out, poor little thing. After all, although she hadn’t responded to any friendliness, neither had she complained. There had been no tears or whimpering, which represented rather astonishing self-control for a seven-year-old. One had to remember that.
    But that dress was going to be a travesty by morning. Kate opened the shabby little suitcase to see what Gianetta would have considered Francesca’s requirements on the journey. To her relief she found a blouse and skirt and a light tweed coat. Somehow the blouse and skirt would have to be forced on to the child in the morning, or, as a last resort, the coat could cover the crumpled dress.
    So all would be well. The worst part of the journey was over. By morning they would be in Paris and by evening in London. Kate pulled the blanket high around Francesca’s sleeping face, and switched off the light over her bunk. Now she would relax with some food and a glass of wine in the restaurant car, and then get some much-needed sleep herself.
    It was quite a journey to reach the restaurant car, and she was thankful the train had not yet left the station. For she had to step over little clumps of schoolgirls who, apparently just as weary as Francesca, had bedded down in the corridors, anxiously supervised by the two harassed mistresses.
    One of the mistresses, a young girl with a round, freckled, hot face, said indignantly to Kate, “There’s been a mistake over our reservations, so we have no seats at all. Can you imagine? And we’ve been travelling all day. The children are worn out.”
    “They look it,” said Kate sympathetically. “Can’t you find any empty seats?”
    “Oh, we’ve parked a few of them here and there. There are thirty of them, and only two of us to look after them.” She pushed the damp hair off her forehead and sighed. “Oh, well, as long as no one falls over them. Kids sleep anywhere. But I do think these Continental trains are the end!”
    Kate thought of the turmoil in the morning when everyone wanted to get into the toilet at once. She picked her way down the narrow corridors, over the children, over stacked luggage, past standing passengers, and the bitterly harassed official with the list of couchettes, past crowded compartments packed with weary tourists already trying to find welcoming spots for their heads, even if it were their neighbour’s reluctant shoulder. Twenty guineas, she was beginning to think, was not such a generous fee after all. Someone struggling on to the train dug the corner of a suitcase into her shin, and behind her the sorely tried official said in tones of the greatest entreaty to an importuning woman, “ S’il vous plâit, madame… ”
    Then a man, leaning