第32章

SHE was awakened by a crash so uproarious that she sat bolt upright before she had her eyes open.Her head struck stunningly against the bottom of the upper berth.This further confused her thoughts.She leaped from the bed, caught up her slippers, reached for her opened-up bundle.The crash was still billowing through the boat; she now recognized it as a great gong sounding for breakfast.She sat down on the bed and rubbed her head and laughed merrily."I _am_ a greenhorn!" she said."Another minute and I'd have had the whole boat laughing at me."She felt rested and hungry--ravenously hungry.She tucked in her blouse, washed as well as she could in the tiny bowl on the little washstand.Then before the cloudy watermarked mirror she arranged her scarcely mussed hair.A charming vision of fresh young loveliness, strong, erect, healthy, bright of eye and of cheek, she made as, after a furtive look up and down the saloon, she stepped from her door a very few minutes after the crash of that gong.With much scuffling and bustling the passengers, most of them country people, were hurrying into places at the tables which now had their extension leaves and were covered with coarse white tablecloths and with dishes of nicked stoneware, white, indeed, but shabbily so.But Susan's young eyes were not critical.To her it all seemed fine, with the rich flavor of adventure.A more experienced traveler might have been filled with gloomy foreboding by the quality of the odor from the cooking.She found it delightful and sympathized with the unrestrained eagerness of the homely country faces about her, with the children beating their spoons on their empty plates.

The colored waiters presently began to stream in, each wearing a soiled white jacket, each bearing aloft a huge tray on which were stacked filled dishes and steaming cups.

Colored people have a keen instinct for class.One of the waiters happened to note her, advanced bowing and smiling with that good-humored, unservile courtesy which is the peculiar possession of the Americanized colored race.He flourished her into a chair with a "Good morning, miss.It's going to be a fine day." And as soon as she was seated he began to form round her plate a large inclosing arc of side dishes--fried fish, fried steak, fried egg, fried potatoes, wheat cakes, canned peaches, a cup of coffee.He drew toward her a can of syrup, a pitcher of cream, and a bowl of granulated sugar.

"Anything else?" said he, with a show of teeth white and sound.

"No--nothing.Thank you so much."

Her smile stimulated him to further courtesies."Some likes the yeggs biled.Shall I change 'em?""No.I like them this way." She was so hungry that the idea of taking away a certainty on the chance of getting something out of sight and not yet cooked did not attract her.

"Perhaps--a little better piece of steak?"

"No--this looks fine." Her enthusiasm was not mere politeness.

"I clean forgot your hot biscuits." And away he darted.

When he came back with a heaping plate of hot biscuits, Sally Lunn and cornbread, she was eating as heartily as any of her neighbors.It seemed to her that never had she tasted such grand food as this served in the white and gold saloon with strangeness and interest all about her and the delightful sense of motion--motion into the fascinating golden unknown.The men at the table were eating with their knives; each had one protecting forearm and hand cast round his arc of small dishes as if to ward off probable attempt at seizure.And they swallowed as if the boat were afire.The women ate more daintily, as became members of the finer sex on public exhibition.They were wearing fingerless net gloves, and their little fingers stood straight out in that gesture which every truly elegant woman deems necessary if the food is to be daintily and artistically conveyed to her lips.The children mussed and gormed themselves, their dishes, the tablecloth.

Susan loved it all.Her eyes sparkled.She ate everything, and regretted that lack of capacity made it impossible for her to yield to the entreaties of her waiter that she "have a little more."She rose, went into the nearest passageway between saloon and promenade, stealthily took a ten-cent piece from her pocketbook.

She called her waiter and gave it to him.She was blushing deeply, frightened lest this the first tip she had ever given or seen given be misunderstood and refused."I'm so much obliged,"she said."You were very nice."

The waiter bowed like a prince, always with his simple, friendly smile; the tip disappeared under his apron."Nobody could help being nice to you, lady."She thanked him again and went to the promenade.It seemed to her that they had almost arrived.Along shore stretched a continuous line of houses--pretty houses with gardens.There were electric cars.Nearer the river lay several parallel lines of railway track along which train after train was speeding, some of them short trains of ordinary day coaches, others long trains made up in part of coaches grander and more beautiful than any she had ever seen.She knew they must be the parlor and dining and sleeping cars she had read about.And now they were in the midst of a fleet of steamers and barges, and far ahead loomed the first of Cincinnati's big suspension bridges, pictures of which she had many a time gazed at in wonder.There was a mingling of strange loud noises--whistles, engines, on the water, on shore; there was a multitude of what seemed to her feverish activities--she who had not been out of quiet Sutherland since she was a baby too young to note things.

The river, the shores, grew more and more crowded.Susan's eyes darted from one new object to another; and eagerly though she looked she felt she was missing more than she saw.

"Why, Susan Lenox!" exclaimed a voice almost in her ear.

She closed her teeth upon a cry; suddenly she was back from wonderland to herself.She turned to face dumpy, dressy Mrs.