her ear.

She closed her teeth upon a cry; suddenly she was back from
wonderland to herself. She turned to face dumpy, dressy Mrs.
Waterbury and her husband with the glossy kinky ringlets and the
long wavy mustache. "How do you do?" she stammered.

"We didn't know you were aboard," said Mrs. Waterbury, a silly,
duck-legged woman looking proudly uncomfortable in her
bead-trimmed black silk.

"Yes--I'm--I'm here," confessed Susan.

"Going to the city to visit?"

"Yes," said Susan. She hesitated, then repeated, "Yes."

"What elegant breakfasts they do serve on these boats! I suppose
your friends'll meet you. But Mort and I'll look after you till
they come."

"Oh, it isn't necessary," protested Susan. The steamer was
passing under the bridge. There were cities on both shores--huge
masses of dingy brick, streets filled with motion of every
kind--always motion, incessant motion, and change. "We're about
there, aren't we?" she asked.

"The wharf's up beyond the second bridge--the Covington Bridge,"
explained Waterbury with the air of the old experienced
globe-trotter. "There's a third one, further up, but you can't
see it for the smoke." And he went on and on, volubly airing his
intimate knowledge of the great city which he visited once a
year for two or three days to buy goods. He ended with a
scornful, "My, but Cincinnati's a dirty place!"

Dirty it might be, but Susan loved it, dirt and all. The smoke,
the grime somehow seemed part of it, one of its charms, one of
the things that made it different from, and superior to,
monotonous country and country town. She edged away from the
Waterburys, hid in her stateroom watching the panorama through
the curtained glass of her promenade deck door. She was
completely carried away. The city! So, this was the city! And
her dreams of travel, of new sights, new faces, were beginning
to come true. She forgot herself, forgot what she had left
behind, forgot what she was to face. All her power of thought
and feeling was used up in absorbing these unfolding wonders.
And when the June sun suddenly pierced the heavy clouds of fog and
smoke, she clasped her hands and gasped, "Lovely! Oh, how lovely!"

And now the steamer was at the huge wharf-boat, in shape like
the one at Sutherland, but in comparative size like the real
Noah's Ark beside a toy ark. And from the whole tremendous scene
rose an enormous clamor, the stentorian voice of the city. That
voice is