The bell over the shop door went ting-a-ling many times that evening to admit belated customers, and as she grew drowsier and drowsier it began to sound like those other bells which would go tinkling along the Sky Road to-morrow night. Ah, that Sky Road! She wouldn't worry, remembering that the Christmas Angels came along that shining highway too. Maybe her heart's desire would be brought to her by one of them!
ALTHOUGH L stands equally for Libby and Lion, and W for William and Whale, it is not to be inferred that the two small travelers thus labeled felt in any degree the courage of the king of beasts or the importance of the king of fishes. With every turn of the car wheels after they left the Junction, Will'm seemed to grow smaller and more bewildered, and Libby more frightened and forlorn. In Will'm's picture of this ride they had borne only their initials. Now they were faring forth tagged with their full names and their father's address. Miss Sally had done that "in case anything should happen."
If Miss Sally had not suggested that something might happen, Libby might not have had her fears aroused, and if they had been allowed to travel all the way in the toilet-room which Miss Sally and Grandma Neal showed them while the train waited its usual ten minutes at the Junction, they could have kept themselves too busy to think about the perils of pilgrimage. Never before had they seen water spurt from shining faucets into big white basins with chained-up holes at the bottom. It suggested magic to Libby, and she thought of several games they could have made, if they had not been hurried back to their seats in the car, and told that they must wait until time to eat, before washing their hands.
"I thought best to tell them that," said Miss Sally, as she and Mrs. Neal went slowly back to the shop. "Or Libby might have had most of the skin scrubbed off her and Will'm before night. And I know he'd drink the water cooler dry just for the pleasure of turning it into his new drinking cup you gave him, if he hadn't been told not to. Well, they're off, and so interested in everything that I don't believe they realized they were starting. There wasn't time for them to think that they were really leaving you."