"
But just how much sadder or how much wiser he never dreamed.
CHAPTER XV Three Hundred Miles in the Train
They filled a whole compartment--at least there was one seat vacant,
but people seemed shy of taking it after a rapid survey of them all.
The whole seven of them, and only Esther as bodyguard--Esther--in
a pink blouse an sailor hat, with a face as bright and mischievous
as Pip's own.
The Captain had come to see them off, with Pat to look after the
luggage. He had bought the tickets--two whole ones for Esther and
Meg, and four halves for the others. Baby was not provided with even
a half, much to her private indignation--it was an insult to her four
years and a half, she considered, to go free like the General.
But the cost of those scraps of pasteboard had made the Captain look
unhappy: he only received eighteenpence change out of the ten pounds
he had tendered; for Yarrahappini was on the borders of the Never-Never
Land.
He spent the eighteenpence on illustrated papers--Scraps, Ally
Sloper's Half-Holiday, Comic Cuts, Funny Folks, and the like,
evidently having no very exalted opinion of the literary
tastes of his family; and he provided Esther with a yellow-back--
on which was depicted a lady in a green dress fainting in the arms
of a gentleman attired in purple, and Meg with Mark Twain's "Jumping
Frog", because he had noticed a certain air of melancholy in her eyes
lately.
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