Page:Christopher Morley--Tales from a rolltop desk.djvu/227

up the ticket, which she had dropped in her nervousness.

"That's all right," he said, encouragingly. "This train, over here. I'm one of the crew. I'll see you get there. Don't worry."

He escorted her through the gate, and found her a seat on the train, beside a stout commuter half buried in parcels.

"Now you stay right here," he said. "I'll tell you when we get to Jamaica, and show you the Heathwood train." He smiled genially, and left her.

Judy got out her wet handkerchief and wiped her face. As the train ran through the tunnel, she wished she had been on the inside of the seat, for the dark window would have been useful as a mirror. "He saw me crying," she kept repeating to herself. The man beside her blanketed himself with a newspaper, and the pile of packages on his knees kept sliding over onto her lap, but she was oblivious. She was thinking of the tall man in blue with the queer cap. How kind he had been. The first real kindness she had met in all that nightmare afternoon.

Presently he came through the car. She could see him far down the aisle, leaning courteously over each seat. At first she thought he was just