no speculation; the
next moment she looked in the same way upon the belongings of the
little country depot--the battered yellow settees, the time-tables,
the long stove in its tract of littered sawdust, the man's face in
the window of the ticket-office.

"Dreadful cross-lookin', ain't she?" one of the women whispered in
the other's ear.

Jane heard the whisper, and looked at them. The women gave each other
violent pokes, they reddened and tittered nervously, then they tried
to look out of the window with an innocent and absent air. But they
need not have been troubled. Jane, although she heard the whisper
perfectly, did not connect it with herself at all. She never thought
much about her own appearance; this morning she had as little vanity
as though she were dead.

When the whistle of the train sounded, the women all pushed anxiously
out on the platform.

"Is this the train that goes to Boston?" Mrs. Field asked one of the
other two.

"I s'pose so," she replied, with a reciprocative flutter. "I'm goin'
to ask so's to be sure. I'm goin' to Dale."

"I always ask," her friend remarked, with decision.

When the train stopped, Mrs. Field inquired of a brakeman. She was
hardly satisfied with his affirmative answer. "Are you the
conductor?" said she, sternly peering.

The young fellow gave a hurried wave of his hand toward the
conductor, "There he is, ma'am."

Mrs. Field asked him also, then she hoisted herself into the car.
When she had taken her seat, she put the same question to a woman in
front of her.

It was a five-hours' ride to Boston. Mrs. Field sat all the while in
her place with her bag in her lap, and never stirred. There was a
look of rigid preparation about her, as if all her muscles were
strained for an instant leap.

Two young girls in an opposite seat noticed her and tittered. They
had considerable merriment over her, twisting their pretty silly
faces, and rolling their blue eyes in her direction, and then
averting them with soft repressed chuckles.

Occasionally Mrs. Field looked over at them, thought of her Lois, and
noted their merriment gravely. She never dreamed that they were
laughing at her. If she had, she would not have considered it twice.

It was four o'clock when Mrs. Field arrived in Boston. She had been
in the city but once before, when she was a young girl. Still she set
out with no hesitation to walk across the city to the depot where she
must take the cars for Elliot. She