all was quite disappointed by the dullness of Sylvia's
perceptions during that momentous first trip, which she had looked
forward to as an occasion for widening the girls' horizon to new
interests. Oddly enough it was Judith, usually so much less quick than
Sylvia, who asked the intelligent questions and listened attentively
to her mother's explanations about the working of the air-brakes, and
the switching systems in railroad yards, and the harvesting of the
crops in the flat, rich country gliding past the windows. It was
quite evident that not a word of this highly instructive talk
reached Sylvia, sitting motionless, absorbing every detail of her
fellow-passengers' aspect, in a sort of trance of receptivity. She
scarcely glanced out of the windows, except when the train stopped at
the station in a large town, when she transferred her steady gaze to
the people coming and going from the train. "Just look, Sylvia, at
those blast-furnaces!" cried her mother as they passed through the
outskirts of an industrial town. "They have to keep them going, you
know, night and day."

"Oh, do they? What for?" asked Judith, craning her neck to watch the
splendid leap of the flames into the darkness.

"Because they can't allow the ore to become--" Mrs. Marshall wondered
why, during her conscientious explanation of blast-furnaces, Sylvia
kept her eyes dully fixed on her hands on her lap. Sylvia was, as a
matter of fact, trying imaginary bracelets on her slim, smooth, white
wrists. The woman opposite her wore bracelets.

"Isn't it fine," remarked the civic-minded Mrs. Marshall, "to see all
these little prairie towns so splendidly lighted?"

"I hadn't noticed them," said Sylvia, her gaze turned on the elegant
nonchalance of a handsome, elderly woman ahead of her. Her mother
looked at her askance, and thought that children are unaccountable.

There were four of the Chicago days, and such important events marked
them that each one had for all time a physiognomy of its own. Years
afterwards when their travels had far outrun that first journey,
Sylvia and Judith could have told exactly what occurred on any given
day of that sojourn, as "on the third day we were in Chicago."

The event of the first day was, of course, the meeting with Aunt
Victoria. They went to see her in a wonderful hotel, entering through
a classic court, with a silver-plashing fountain in the middle, and
slim Ionic pillars standing up white and glorious out of masses