Jane and Valdemar Hunter had decided to continue searching for mother, travelling by train. They had gone to bed early because they had to be at the train station very soon.

“Now that’s a coincidence that we meet again! Come; let me present you to my sister! Janey this is Rachel Stoner; I met her yesterday in front of the bookstore.” “Pleased to meet you Rachel. I suppose that you’re going to travel as well with this train?”
“Oh yes; I surely will. It’s completely new and I simply love new things.”

While the women were talking, Val looked around with curiosity because there were more people coming. As always, he expressed his thoughts without thinking and exclaimed: “I do hope that the bad humoured old man will not travel with us!”

Jane just couldn’t believe that her brother was behaving so badly. “Val, please think twice before saying something!”

Rachel laughed and said: “That bad humoured old man is my husband.” Jane looked at her brother sending him an ‘eye dagger’ but Rachel was having fun with his comment.

She called her husband: “Jacob, honey come over here please, I will present you to these charming young people: Valdemar and Jane Hunter.” Then she called the young woman as well and presented her as their daughter Myra.

Jane very soon discovered that Rachel just couldn’t stop talking. “Aren’t you anxious to see what the interior of the train looks like? Let’s go inside.”

All of them went inside to explore the train. It was a nice surprise to see that there was a lot of space, several bathrooms and a good kitchen ruled by a young woman called Daisy Bell. In the corridors there were some bookcases with an extensive library. It wasn’t bad at all.
They had been told that the lounge would be the place where they could have their meals; where they could watch TV and well socialize with other travellers.

Afterwards, in the intimacy of their sleeper, Jane said: “Val, don’t you ever grow up? Fortunately Rachel didn’t take it bad¡ that you were sentencing her husband as a ‘bad humoured old man’. I almost wanted to be swallowed by the earth when I heard you saying that!”

Val put a guilty face because he knew that his sister expected him to. Then, they heard a metal whistle and the train started moving. It was the first time they travelled by train and they were exited. After a short while they got used to the movement and they left their sleeper to find the lounge again.

In one of the corridors they saw how Daisy Bell was patiently listening to Rachel’s word-stream. Daisy showed her the kitchen but told her that from now on, she would be the only one with the key.

When Rachel noticed that the twins were going to the lounge, she freed Daisy and hurried to meet up with Jane. She started to inquire: “Where are you going to?” and before Jane could open her mouth to answer, the woman continued talking: “We are going to Cornucopia. My grandmother’s sister lives there. We’re going to visit her because she’s going to get married.” Jane saw how her brother was about to say something ‘typical Val’ and she quickly sent him a warning look.

Rachel continued: “Yes, she’s 85 years old now and found someone in the senior residence with whom she gets along well and they want to spend their last years together. Oooh… but she always has some surprises for us because when she was 81 she decided to divorce her first husband. She was complaining about him not ehhh… you know what I mean? Hahaha!”

Jane noticed that it would be very difficult to get rid of Rachel and she said: “Oh, well… you never can tell what we will do when we’re that age. Hey…, I see that we can play chess here! Come on Val, you needed to improve your logic skill!” She sighed with relieve when Val followed her to the chess table.

Later that evening, they watched the news and then they went to their sleeper where they continued talking a while. “Have you seen those muscles of Rachel’s daughter, sis?”

“Yes, I noticed that you were looking at her legs all of the time. Do you like her?”
“No definitely not. She’s not my type. I prefer her mother.”
“You cannot be serious! She just is not able to be quiet!”

“That’s why I like her.” Then he turned around and fell asleep.

Next day was quite monotonous. They could tell that the landscape was changing but didn’t see it very well due to the speed of the train. It didn’t stop during the day. So they just were chatting, watching TV, eating and playing chess.

Daisy turned out to be a very good chef in spite of her youth. Everybody was pleased with her meals.

The day after, at midday, something horrible happened. Daisy had prepared lunch and she had put the stove in the kitchen on. They were all alarmed by the smoke detector. There was a big fire in the kitchen. The train had to make an emergency stop.

The passengers were very nervous because they saw through the door window that Daisy was in great danger and it was impossible to go inside the kitchen. They saw Daisy trying to extinct to fire and really thought that she couldn’t manage on her own but the young woman was doing a great job. After a long while someone from the fire department came and they saw that Daisy had mastered the fire by herself. She was given a big compliment.

They offered to help her clean the kitchen but she refused help and told them that the enterprise had told her that nobody but herself could enter the kitchen.
The rest of the day, they had enough to talk about. Next day they would arrive at Cornucopia were the train would stay longer than was planned because the insurance company had to esteem the damages caused by the fire.

That evening Daisy was exhausted when she went to bed. She had deserved a good rest. She knew that tomorrow there would be three passengers less because the Stoners would stay at Cornucopia.

Rachel came to say good-bye to Jane, wishing her a good continuation of the travel.
Jane wished her all the best and hoped that they would have a good time at the wedding of her relative.

While Val still was showering and looking at himself in the mirror, Jane went out of the train to have a drink in the station’s cafeteria.
Then she went inside again to urge her brother to come out with her. “Where do you want to go to?” he asked. She answered: “First of all to the bookshop to buy a map of this place. We will have a whole day to get to know it because we won’t be leaving until this evening.”

It was not a very big island. The village was small but there were many very beautiful beaches.

To be continued…