Читать книгу Jessica Trent's Inheritance онлайн

27 страница из 51

Jessica had had a reasonable sum of money given her, when she left Sobrante, her mother believing it would add to that womanly training she needed to have charge of it; and without consulting her present guardian the girl had given the sick woman enough of her fund to pay the different rate of fare.

It was too late for Mr. Hale to object, and he was too polite to do so. The utmost he could accomplish was to warn his charge to expend nothing more without his advice, and to pass as much of his time in the smoker as was possible. Fortunately, the baby was a happy child, when physically comfortable; and it was a good sleeper; so that the lawyer’s fear of being kept awake at night, by having it in the lower berth, proved groundless.

By the end of the second day out Jessica and the baby, which she carried everywhere, had become the life of the train; “going visiting” in one car after another, making friends in each, and feeling almost as if they were always to journey thus amid these now familiar faces. But all journeys end in time, and as they drew nearer and nearer to the eastern coast, one after another these fellow travelers departed at some stopping-place, nearest their homes.