ntered the crowded
heart of the city. They passed close to dark houses grimy with the
accumulated smoke of many passing locomotives. Great factories loomed
before the train, factories where girls looked up for a moment at the
whirring cars and turned again to the grinding life of loom or machine.
The sight disheartened Phoebe. Was life in the city like that for some
girls? How dreadful to be shut up in a factory while outdoors the whole
panorama of the seasons moved on! She would miss the fields and woods
but she would make the sacrifice gladly if she might only see life, meet
people and learn to sing. The thoughts awakened by the sight of the
shut-in girls were not happy ones. She welcomed the call, "Reading
Terminal, Philadelphia."

As she followed the stream of fellow passengers and walked through the
dim train shed to the exit her heart beat more quickly--she was really
in Philadelphia! But the noise, the stream of people rushing from trains
past other people rushing to trains, bewildered her. She saw the sea of
faces beyond the iron gates and experienced for the first time the
loneliness that comes to a traveler who enters a thronged depot and sees
a host of people but enters unwelcomed and ungreeted.

However, the loneliness was momentary. The next minute she caught sight
of Miss Lee. A wave of relief and happiness swept over her--she was in
Philadelphia, the land of her heart's desire!

CHAPTER XVI

PHOEBE'S DIARY

_September 15._

I'M in Philadelphia--really, truly! Phoebe Metz, late of a gray
farmhouse in Lancaster County, is sitting in a beautiful room of the Lee
residence, Philadelphia.

What a lot of things I have to write in you, diary! I can scarcely find
the beginning. Before I left home I thought about keeping a diary, how
entertaining it would be to sit down when I'm old and gray and read the
accounts of my first winter in the city. So I went to Greenwald and
bought the fattest note-book I could find and I'm going to write in you
all of my joys--let's hope there won't be any sorrows--and all of my
pleasures and all about my impressions of places and people in this
great, wonderful City of Brotherly Love. Of course, I'll write letters
home and to David and Mother Bab and some of the girls, but there are so
many things one can't tell others yet likes to remember. So you'll have
to be my safety valve, confidant and confessor.

When I l