now and then
glanced at them and thought of Evelyn, and was thankful that she was
not like them.

The little dwarf also glanced now and then at them with her pleasant
and sardonic smile and with an unruffled patience. She seemed either
to look up from the depths of, or down from the heights of, her
deformity upon them, and to hardly sense them at all. None of the men
returned until a large city was reached, where some of them were to
get off. Then they lounged into the car, were brushed, took their
satchels, and when the train reached the station swung out, with the
unfailing trebles still in their ears.

Before the train reached New York, all the many appurtenances had
vanished from the car. The chattering girls also had alighted at a
station, with a renewed din like a flock of birds, and there were
then left in the rear car only Maria, the dwarf woman, and her maid.

It was not until the train was lighted, and she could no longer see
anything from the window except signal-lights and lighted windows of
towns through which they whirled, that Maria's unnatural mood
disappeared. Suddenly she glanced around the lighted car, and terror
seized her. She was no longer a very young girl; she had much
strength of character, but she was unused to the world. For the first
time she seemed to feel the cold waters of it touch her very heart.
She thought of the great and terrible city into which she was to
launch herself late at night. She considered that she knew absolutely
nothing about the hotels. She even remembered, vaguely, having heard
that no unattended woman was admitted to one, and then she had no
baggage except her little satchel. She glanced at herself in the
little glass beside her seat, and her pretty face all at once
occurred to her as being a great danger rather than an advantage. Now
she wished for her aunt Maria's face instead of her own. She imagined
that Aunt Maria might have no difficulty even under the same adverse
circumstances. She looked years younger than she was. She thought for
a moment of going into the lavatory and rearranging her hair, with a
view to making herself look plain and old, as she had done before,
but she recalled the enormous change it had made in her appearance,
and she was afraid to do that lest it should seem a suspicious
circumstance to the conductors and her fellow-passengers. She glanced
across the aisle at the dwarf woman, and their eyes met, and suddenly
a curious sort of feeling