ss, bound elsewhere, by peremptory necessity; there were people
who were going nowhere but about their daily work and errands; all these
were simply to be pitied, or wondered at, as to how they could feel
_not_ to be going upon a mountain journey. It is queer to think, on a
last Thursday in November, or on a Fourth of July, of States where there
may not be a Thanksgiving, or of far-off lands that have no Independence
day. It was just as strange, somehow, to imagine how this day, that was
to them the culminating point of so much happy anticipation, the
beginning of so much certain joy, could be otherwise, and yet be
anything to the supernumerary people who filled up around them the life
that centred in just this to them. Yet in truth it was, to most folks,
simply a fair Monday morning, and an excellent "drying day."

They bounded off along the iron track,--the great steam pulse throbbed
no faster than in time to their bright young eagerness. It had been a
momentous matter to decide upon their seats, of which there had been
opportunity for choice when they entered the car; at last they had been
happily settled, face to face, by the good-natured removal of a couple
of young farmers, who saw that the four ladies wished to be seated
together. Their hand-bags were hung up, their rolls of shawls disposed
beneath their feet, and Mrs. Linceford had taken out her novel. The
Haddens had each a book also in her bag, to be perfectly according to
rule in their equipment; but they were not old travelers enough to care
to begin upon them yet. As to Leslie Goldthwaite, _her_ book lay ready
open before her, for long, contented reading, in two chapters, both
visible at once--the broad, open country, with its shifting pictures and
suggestions of life and pleasantness; and the carriage interior, with
its dissimilar human freight, and its yet more varied hints of history
and character and purpose.

She made a story in her own mind, half unconsciously, of every one about
her. Of the pretty girl alone, with no elaborate traveling arrangements,
going only, it was evident, from one way-station to another, perhaps to
spend a summer day with a friend. Of the stout old country grandmamma,
with a basket full of doughnuts and early apples, that made a spiciness
and orchard fragrance all about her, and that she surely never meant to
eat herself, seeing, first, that she had not a tooth in her head, and
also that she made repeated anxious requests of th