cquainted, we'll have to make
the most of what's left of the way. I am Elsie Moss and I was sixteen
Christmas day. Aren't you about that age?"

"I am sixteen, Miss Moss," returned Elsie Marley formally.

"But don't call me _Miss_," pleaded the other. "_Everybody_ calls me
Elsie."

Elsie Marley did not reply. She disliked the idea that the
unchaperoned stranger should be Elsie, also, and should even have the
same initials. Her imagination was limited; still it occurred to her
that the situation would have been much worse had the girl happened to
bear the surname Pritchard.

She stifled a sigh. They seemed to be getting acquainted perforce.
Now that she was out, however, she didn't care to go back at once, even
though the sun beat down upon them fiercely, and the dry grass was full
of dust and cinders. She glanced about irresolutely.

"Now if this were a scene in a play," remarked Elsie Moss reflectively,
"the engine would have broken down near a grove with immemorial trees,
or there'd be a dell hard by where the hero and heroine could wander by
a stream. Or else--" she hesitated. "You don't feel comfy, do you?"

"The sun is so hot, it's hardly safe to be out. I'd better go in
again," replied the other.

"But the car'll be awfully hot, too, standing right in the sun. I
know--I'll get an umbrella."

She rushed off at full speed lest the other should
remonstrate--something that Elsie Marley didn't think of doing. She
accepted the favor as a matter of course, and they walked on slowly,
the one restraining her eager feet with difficulty.

"Oh, dear, I suppose _you're_ going to New York, too?" she asked.
"Everybody seems to be except poor me."

The other returned a spiritless affirmative.

"Of course! Oh, dear, and I'm simply _perishing_ to go! But I'm due
in a poky little place in Massachusetts called Enderby. Isn't that the
limit? The name alone would queer the place, don't you think so? It's
fairly near Boston, but they say Boston's slow compared with New York
or even with San Francisco."

She waited a moment, then rattled on.

"Do you know, sometimes it seems my _duty_ to go to New York. I've got
five hundred dollars all my own. Dad had a long sickness, and, anyhow,
he never got much ahead; but he left me that clear, and I'm just going
to beg and implore my uncle on bended knee to let me take it and go to
New York to study. I could get a start with that, I'm sure."

She looked up so ea