house; with only the two breaks in it where on one side and
on the other the iron rail track ran off into the distance. It was a
lonely place; almost nobody was there waiting for the train; one or
two forlorn coloured people and a long lank-looking countryman, were
all. Except what at first prevented my seeing anything else--my cousin
Preston. He met me just as I was going to get down from the car;
lifted me to the platform, and then with his looks and words almost
broke up the composure which for several days had been growing upon
me. It was not hardened yet to bear attacks. I was like a poor
shell-fish, which, having lost one coat of armour and defence, craves
a place of hiding and shelter for itself until its new coat be grown.
While he was begging me to come into the station-house and rest, I
stood still looking up the long line of railway by which we had come,
feeling as if my life lay at the other end of it, out of sight and
quite beyond reach. Yet I asked him not to call me "poor" Daisy. I was
very tired, and I suppose my nerves not very steady. Preston said we
must wait at that place for another train; there was a fork in the
road beyond, and this train would not go the right way. It would not
take us to Baytown. So he had me into the station-house.

It wearied me and so did all that my eyes lighted upon, strange though
it was. The bare room, not clean; the board partition, with swinging
doors, behind which, Preston said, were the cook and the baker! the
untidy waiting girls that came and went, with scant gowns and coarse
shoes, and no thread of white collar to relieve the dusky throat and
head rising out of the dark gown, and no apron at all. Preston did
what he could. He sent away the girls with their trays of eatables; he
had a table pulled out from the wall and wiped off, and then he
ordered a supper of eggs, and johnny cake, and all sorts of things.
But I could not eat. As soon as supper was over I went out on the
platform to watch the long lines of railway running off through the
forest, and wait for the coming train. The evening fell while we
looked; the train was late; and at last when it came I could only know
it in the distance by the red spark of its locomotive gleaming like a
firefly.

It was a freight train, there was but one passenger car, and that was
full. We got seats with difficulty, and apart from each other. I
hardly know whether that, or anything, could have made me more
forlorn. I was alr