em get down. They simply hurled themselves off as they could, and my
heart was in my mouth for them, and for myself, many times while my cab
mingled with the surging and apparently uncontrolled traffic.

It was a long drive, though, and as I had time to calm down I saw that
numbers of the huge buildings are nobly designed, and very magnificent
in decoration, making a splendid effect in spite of their vast size
rather than because of it. And such shops, too! They're like the fairy
palaces my nurse used to tell me about, as big as whole cities, where
you could get anything you wanted just by wishing.

On the way, I made up my mind to ask Sally a number of questions; why
they have the curbstones so high in Chicago; why the women, though
dressed much the same as in New York, look quite different and have a
style of their own, even in their walk; why almost all the men are
young; and why, though there is such a network of trams, nearly
everybody seems to need a motor car?

I think American girls must be braver than English ones, for where with
us, if a girl drives a motor she is so remarkable that her picture is
at once put in a newspaper, in the States a girl in a car, in the midst
of howling traffic, doesn't even have the air of wanting to scream or
faint, but just sits straight up and smiles with her figure looking
inexpressibly French; and there are two or three of her in every
important street.

There was a wonderful swinging bridge which we had to wait for until it
chose to come to us, like the mountain to Mahomet, and presently we
trotted into a beautiful Avenue near a startlingly unexpected blue sea
which I thought must be a mirage, till the cabman said it was Lake
Michigan. But who would have thought of a lake being like that? The
only ones I ever saw were pretty little things in parks where you fed
swans.

At last we stopped before a large, handsome house, with a lawn round it
and no fence. The house was stone in front, but had brick sides which
gave it a queer effect, yet somehow didn't spoil it; and wherever there
wasn't a porch, it had broken out in bow windows.

I told the cabman to wait, and then ran up the four or five steps to
ring the front door bell. In a minute a maid came who would have been
very smart-looking if she had only worn a proper cap.

"Is Miss Woodburn stopping here?" I asked.

"No, she isn't," returned the young woman with a glint of the eye which
seemed to say, she would perish soon