's name, proved an excellent
travelling companion. She was not only a splendid conversationalist,
but also she knew how to procure warm tea from the porter. Soon she
and Nancy were quite at ease with each other, Nancy contributing her
share at the entertaining, with her homely gossip of the Monk Road and
its people. The baby was her chief solace, however, and its mother
only had it during the midnight hours, so constant a nurse was she.
And the atom itself was tractable beyond its own mother's belief.

The process of making up the beds in the sleeper gave Nancy an
unpleasant half-hour. She did not admire the masculine performances of
the porter.

"It's no work for an ignorant black man," she informed Mrs. Morris, in
a deprecatory tone. Then she spoke directly to the negro: "Ye can just
pull down the cover, an' I'll do me own fixin'."

[Illustration: "Ye can just pull down the cover, an' I'll do me own
fixin'."]

"Yes, mum," he answered, grinning, but he did not desist from his
duties.

"He's one of thim furriners, who don't know what ye're sayin', I
suppose," she observed, resignedly.

When the conductor made his last round of the cars, before the lamps
were extinguished, Nancy stopped him and questioned anxiously, "Ye'll
be sure to waken me at Chicago?"

"Why, ma'am, we won't arrive there until tomorrow evening," he answered.

"So ye say, but I'm strange to the run o' trains, an' I don't want to
be goin' miles past the place and niver know it," she objected.

"Never fear, missus, you'll be looked after properly," he said,
consolingly.

The night and day journey to Chicago was so full of pleasant happenings
that Nancy could scarcely realize it was almost over. With the Morris
baby asleep in her arms, she would gaze from the window at the panorama
of country drifting past, interested in its strangeness only in a
superficial sort of way, while her inmost thoughts pictured the great
city to which she was going, and wherein she expected her son to be the
most predominant figure. Each hour seemed to be bringing him closer to
her, and a mild yearning centred about her heart. Occasionally a
twinge of apprehension would mar her tranquillity. She wondered if he
would know her, and if he had received the postcard which she had
written with so much care a week previous. She was too conscious of
her happiness to let such thoughts disturb her for long, and then Mrs.
Morris lived in Chicago and had promised to