THE SLEEPING CAR 1 THE SLEEPING CAR THE SLEEPING CAR 2 I SCENE One side of a sleeping car on the Boston and Albany Road The curtains are drawn before most of the berths from the hooks and rods hang hats bonnets bags bandboxes umbrellas and other travelling gear on the floor are boots of both sexes set out for THE PORTER to black THE PORTER is making up the beds in the upper and lower berths adjoining the seats on which a young mother slender and pretty with a baby asleep on the seat beside her and a stout old lady sit confronting each other MRS AGNES ROBERTS and her aunt MARY MRS ROBERTS Do you always take down your back hair aunty AUNT MARY No never child at least not since I had such a fright about it once coming on from New York It s all well enough to take down your back hair if it IS yours but if it isn t your head s the best place for it Now as I buy mine of Madame Pierrot MRS ROBERTS Don t you WISH she wouldn t advertise it as HUMAN hair It sounds so pokerish like human flesh you know AUNT MARY Why she couldn t call it INhuman hair my dear MRS ROBERTS thoughtfully No just HAIR AUNT MARY Then people might think it was for mattresses But as I was saying I took it off that night and tucked it safely away as I supposed in my pocket and I slept sweetly till about midnight when I happened to open my eyes and saw something long and black crawl off my bed and slip under the berth SUCH a shriek as I gave my dear A snake a snake oh a snake And everybody began talking at once and some of the gentlemen swearing and the porter came running with the poker to kill it and all the while it was that ridiculous switch of mine that had worked out of my pocket And glad enough I was to grab it up before anybody saw it and say I must have been dreaming MRS ROBERTS Why aunty how funny How COULD you suppose a serpent could get on board a sleeping car of all places in the world AUNT MARY That was the perfect absurdity of it THE PORTER Berths ready now ladies THE SLEEPING CAR 3 MRS ROBERTS to THE PORTER who walks away to the end of the car and sits down near the door Oh thank you Aunty do you feel nervous the least bit AUNT MARY Nervous No Why MRS ROBERTS Well I don t know I suppose I ve been worked up a little about meeting Willis and wondering how he ll look and all We can t KNOW each other of course It doesn t stand to reason that if he s been out there for twelve years ever since I was a child though we ve corresponded regularly at least I have that he could recognize me not at the first glance you know He ll have a full beard and then I ve got married and here s the baby Oh NO he ll never guess who it is in the world Photographs really amount to nothing in such a case I wish we were at home and it was all over I wish he had written some particulars instead of telegraphing from Ogden Be with you on the 7 A M Wednesday AUNT MARY Californians always telegraph my dear they never think of writing It isn t expensive enough and it doesn t make your blood run cold enough to get a letter and so they send you one of those miserable yellow despatches whenever they can those printed in a long string if possible so that you ll be SURE to die before you get to the end of it I suppose your brother has fallen into all those ways and says reckon and ornary and which the same just like one of Mr Bret Harte s characters MRS ROBERTS But it isn t exactly our not knowing each other aunty that s worrying me that s something that could be got over in time What is simply driving me distracted is Willis and Edward meeting there when I m away from home Oh how COULD I be away and why COULDN T Willis have given us fair warning I would have hurried from the ends of the earth to meet him I don t believe poor Edward ever saw a Californian and he s so quiet and preoccupied I m sure he d never get on with Willis And if Willis is the least loud he wouldn t like Edward Not that I suppose he IS loud but I don t believe he knows anything about literary men But you can see aunty can t you how very anxious I must be Don t you see that I ought to have been there when THE SLEEPING CAR 4 Willis and Edward met so as to to well to BREAK them to each other don t you know AUNT MARY Oh you needn t be troubled about that Agnes I dare say they ve got on perfectly well together Very likely they re sitting down to the unwholesomest hot supper this instant that the ingenuity of man could invent MRS ROBERTS Oh do you THINK they are aunty Oh if I could ONLY believe they were sitting down to a hot supper together now I should be SO happy They d be sure to get on if they were There s nothing like eating to make men friendly with each other Don t you know at receptions how they never have anything to say to each other till the escalloped oysters and the chicken salad appear and then how sweet they are as soon as they ve helped the ladies to ice Oh thank you THANK you aunty for thinking of the hot supper It s such a relief to my mind You can understand can t you aunty dear how an