But this was only the first surprise of annoyance. She recollected
herself on the instant, and leaned back again, saying nothing more. She
had no idea of amusing her unknown stage companions at any length with
her fine-lady miseries. Only, just before they reached the hotel, she
added low to Jeannie, out of the unbroken train of her own private
lamentation, "And my rose-glycerine! After all this dust and heat! I
feel parched to a mummy, and I shall be an object to behold!"

Leslie sat upon her right hand. She leaned closer, and said quickly,
glad of the little power to comfort, "I have some rose-glycerine here in
my bag."

Mrs. Linceford looked round at her; her face was really bright. As if
she had not lost her one trunk also! "You are a phoenix of a traveling
companion, you young thing!" the lady thought, and felt suddenly ashamed
of her own unwonted discomfiture.

Half an hour afterward Leslie Goldthwaite flitted across the passage
between the two rooms they had secured for their party, with a bottle in
her hand and a pair of pillows over her arm. "Ours is a double-bedded
room, too, Mrs. Linceford, and neither Elinor nor I care for more than
one pillow. And here is the rose-glycerine."

These essential comforts, and the instinct of good-breeding, brought the
grace and the smile back fully to Mrs. Linceford's face. More than that,
she felt a gratefulness, and the contagion and emulation of cheerful
patience under a common misfortune. She bent over and kissed Leslie as
she took the bottle from her hand. "You're a dear little sunbeam," she
said. "We'll send an imperative message down the line, and have all our
own traps again to-morrow."