owering, stately, imperturbable, a great ocean
steamer glided slowly towards the bay, by very might and majesty holding
her way serene and undisturbed, on a nobler errand. Honora thrilled as
she gazed, as though at last her dream were coming true, and she felt
within her the pulse of the world's artery. That irksome sense of
spectatorship seemed to fly, and she was part and parcel now of the
great, moving things, with sure pinions with which to soar. Standing
rapt upon the forward deck of the ferry, she saw herself, not an atom,
but one whose going and coming was a thing of consequence. It seemed
but a simple step to the deck of that steamer when she, too, would be
travelling to the other side of the world, and the journey one of the
small incidents of life.

The ferry bumped into its slip, the windlasses sang loudly as they took
up the chains, the gates folded back, and Honora was forced with the
crowd along the bridge-like passage to the right. Suddenly she saw
Cousin Eleanor and the girls awaiting her.

"Honora," said Edith, when the greetings were over and they were all
four in the carriage, which was making its way slowly across the dirty
and irregularly paved open space to a narrow street that opened between
two saloons, "Honora, you don't mean to say that Anne Rory made that
street dress? Mother, I believe it's better-looking than the one I got
at Bremer's."

"It's very simple,", said Honora.

"And she looks fairly radiant," cried Edith, seizing her cousin's hand.
"It's quite wonderful, Honora; nobody would ever guess that you were
from the West, and that you had spent the whole summer in St. Louis."

Cousin Eleanor smiled a little as she contemplated Honora, who sat,
fascinated, gazing out of the window at novel scenes. There was a
colour in her cheeks and a sparkle in her eyes. They had reached Madison
Square. Madison Square, on a bright morning in late September, seen for
the first time by an ambitious young lady who had never been out of
St. Louis! The trimly appointed vehicles, the high-stepping horses, the
glittering shops, the well-dressed women and well-groomed men--all had
an esprit de corps which she found inspiring. On such a morning,
and amidst such a scene, she felt that there was no limit to the
possibilities of life.

Until this year, Cousin Eleanor had been a conservative in the matter of
hotels, when she had yielded to Edith's entreaties to go to one of the
"new ones." Hotels, indeed, that