on the way to Chicago. The unceasingly smooth and even
rush of the train satisfied something in her. An old lady sitting in an
adjoining seat with a companion amused Carley by the remark: "I wish we
didn't go so fast. People nowadays haven't time to draw a comfortable
breath. Suppose we should run off the track!"

Carley had no fear of express trains, or motor cars, or transatlantic
liners; in fact, she prided herself in not being afraid of anything.
But she wondered if this was not the false courage of association with
a crowd. Before this enterprise at hand she could not remember anything
she had undertaken alone. Her thrills seemed to be in abeyance to the
end of her journey. That night her sleep was permeated with the steady
low whirring of the wheels. Once, roused by a jerk, she lay awake in
the darkness while the thought came to her that she and all her fellow
passengers were really at the mercy of the engineer. Who was he, and
did he stand at his throttle keen and vigilant, thinking of the
lives intrusted to him? Such thoughts vaguely annoyed Carley, and she
dismissed them.

A long half-day wait in Chicago was a tedious preliminary to the second
part of her journey. But at last she found herself aboard the California
Limited, and went to bed with a relief quite a stranger to her. The
glare of the sun under the curtain awakened her. Propped up on her
pillows, she looked out at apparently endless green fields or pastures,
dotted now and then with little farmhouses and tree-skirted villages.
This country, she thought, must be the prairie land she remembered lay
west of the Mississippi.

Later, in the dining car, the steward smilingly answered her question:
"This is Kansas, and those green fields out there are the wheat that
feeds the nation."

Carley was not impressed. The color of the short wheat appeared soft and
rich, and the boundless fields stretched away monotonously. She had
not known there was so much flat land in the world, and she imagined it
might be a fine country for automobile roads. When she got back to her
seat she drew the blinds down and read her magazines. Then tiring of
that, she went back to the observation car. Carley was accustomed to
attracting attention, and did not resent it, unless she was annoyed.
The train evidently had a full complement of passengers, who, as far as
Carley could see, were people not of her station in life. The glare from
the many windows, and the rather crass inter