  The car was quite crowded. There were more people than themselves who were going to the Fair and were obliged to economize. When the children entered, and looked about them in the dim light, they thought at first that all the seats were full. People seemed to be huddled up asleep or sitting up awake in all of them. Everybody had been trying to get to sleep, at least, and the twins found themselves making their whispers even lower than before. “I think there is a seat empty just behind that very fat lady,” Meg whispered. It was at the end of the car, and they went to it, and found she was right. They took possession of it quietly, putting their satchel under the seat. “It seems so still,” said Meg, “I feel as if I was in somebody’s bedroom. The sound of the wheels makes it seem all the quieter. It’s as if we were shut in by the noise.” “We mustn’t talk,” said Robin, “or we shall waken the people. Can you go to sleep, Meg?” “I can if I can stop thinking,” she answered, with a joyful sigh. “I’m very tired; but the wheels keep saying, over and over again, ‘We’re going—we’re going—we’re going.’ It’s just as if they were talking. Don’t you hear them?” “Yes, I do. Do they say that to you, too? But we mustn’t listen,” Robin whispered back. “If we do we shall not go to sleep, and then we shall be too tired to walk about. Let’s put our heads down, and shut our eyes, Meg.” “Well, let’s,” said Meg. She curled herself up on the seat, and put her head into the corner. “If you lean against me, Rob,” she said, “it will be softer. We can take turns.” They changed position a little two or three times, but they were worn out with the day’s work, and their walk, and the excitement, and the motion of the train seemed like a sort of rocking which lulled them. Gradually their muscles relaxed and they settled down, though, after they had done so, Meg spoke once, drowsily. “Rob,” she said, “did you see that was our man?” “Yes,” answered Rob, very sleepily indeed, “and he looked as if he knew us.” * * * * * * * * If they had been less young, or if they had been less tired, they might have found themselves awake a good many times during the night. But they were such children, and, now that the great step was taken, were so happy, that the soft, deep sleepiness of youth descended upon and overpowered them. Once or twice during the night they stirred, wakened for a dreamy, blissful moment by some sound of a door shutting, or a conductor passing through. But they were only conscious of a delicious sense of strangeness, of the stillness of the car full of sleepers, of the half-realized delight of feeling themselves carried along through the unknown country, and of the rattle of the wheels, which never ceased saying rhythmically, “We’re going—we’re going—we’re going!” Ah! what a night of dreams and new, vague sensations, to be remembered always! Ah! that heavenly sense of joy to come, and adventure, and young hopefulness and imagining! Were there many others carried towards the City Beautiful that night who bore with them the same rapture of longing and belief; who saw with such innocent clearness only the fair and splendid thought which had created it, and were so innocently blind to any shadow of sordidness or mere worldly interest touching its white walls? And after the passing of this wonderful night, what a wakening in the morning, at the first rosiness of dawn, when all the other occupants of the car were still asleep, or restlessly trying to be at ease! It was as if they both wakened at almost the same moment. The first shaft of early sunlight streaming in the window touched Meg’s eyelids, and she slowly opened them. Then something joyous and exultant rushed in upon her heart, and she sat upright. And Robin sat up too, and they looked at each other. “It’s the Day, Meg!” said Robin. “It’s the Day!” Meg caught her breath. “And nothing has stopped us,” she said. “And we are getting nearer and nearer. Rob, let us look out of the window.” For a while they looked out, pressed close together, and full of such ecstasy of delight in the strangeness of everything that at first they did not exchange even their whispers. It is rather a good thing to see—rather well worth while even for a man or woman—the day waking, and waking the world, as one is borne swiftly through the morning light, and one looks out of a car window. What it was to these two children only those who remember the children who were themselves long ago can realize at all. The country went hurrying past them, making curious sudden revelations and giving half-hints in its haste; prairie and field, farmhouse and wood and village all wore a strange, exciting, vanishing aspect. “It seems,” Meg said, “as if it was all going somewhere—in a great hurry—as if it couldn’t wait to let us see it.” “But we are the ones that are going,” said Rob. “Listen to the wheels—and we shall soon be there.” After a while the people who were asleep began to stir and stretch themselves. Some of them looked cross, and some looked tired. The very fat lady in the seat before them had a coal smut on her nose. “Robin,” said Meg, after looking at her seriously a moment, “let’s get our towel out of the bag and wet it and wash our faces.” They had taken the liberty of borrowing a towel from Aunt Matilda. It was Meg who had thought of it, and it had, indeed, been an inspiration. Robin wetted two corners of it, and they made a rigorous if limited toilet. At least they had no smuts on their noses, and after a little touching up with the mutual comb and brush, they looked none the worse for wear. Their plain and substantial garments were not of the order which has any special charm to lose. “And it’s not our clothes that are going to the Fair,” said Meg, “it’s us!” And by the time they were in good order, the farms and villages they were flying past had grown nearer together. The platforms at the dÉpÔts were full of people who wore a less provincial look; the houses grew larger and so did the towns; they found themselves flashing past advertisements of all sorts of things, and especially of things connected with the Fair. “You know how we used to play ‘hunt the thimble,’” said Robin, “and how, when any one came near the place where it was hidden, we said, ‘Warm—warmer—warmer still—hot!’ It’s like that now. We have been getting warmer and warmer every minute, and now we are getting——” “We shall be in in a minute,” said a big man at the end of the car, and he stood up and began to take down his things. “Hot,” said Robin, with an excited little laugh. “Meg, we’re not going—going—going any more. Look out of the window.” “We are steaming into the big dÉpÔt,” cried Meg. “How big it is! What crowds of people! Robin, we are there!” Robin bent down to pick up their satchel; the people all rose in their seats and began to move in a mass down the aisle toward the door. Everybody seemed suddenly to become eager and in a hurry, as if they thought the train would begin to move again and carry them away. Some were expecting friends to meet them, some were anxious about finding accommodations. Those who knew each other talked, asked questions over people’s shoulders, and there was a general anxiety about valises, parcels, and umbrellas. Robin and Meg were pressed back into their section by the crowd, against which they were too young to make headway. “We shall have to wait until the grown-up people have passed by,” Rob said. But the crowd in the aisle soon lost its compactness, and they were able to get out. The porter, who stood on the platform near the steps, looked at them curiously, and glanced behind them to see who was with them, but he said nothing. It seemed to the two as if all the world must have poured itself into the big dÉpÔt or be passing through it. People were rushing about; friends were searching for one another, pushing their way through the surging crowd; some were greeting each other with exclamations and hand-shaking, and stopping up the way; there was a Babel of voices, a clamor of shouts within the covered place, and from outside came a roar of sound rising from the city. For a few moments Robin and Meg were overwhelmed. They did not quite know what to do; everybody pushed past and jostled them. No one was ill-natured, but no one had time to be polite. They were so young and so strange to all such worlds of excitement and rush, involuntarily they clutched each other’s hands after their time-honored fashion, when they were near each other and overpowered. The human vortex caught them up and carried them along, not knowing where they were going. “We seem so little!” gasped Meg. “There—there are so many people! Rob, Rob, where are we going?” Robin had lost his breath too. Suddenly the world seemed so huge—so huge! Just for a moment he felt himself turn pale, and he looked at Meg and saw that she was pale too. “Everybody is going out of the dÉpÔt,” he said. “Hold on to me tight, Meg. It will be all right. We shall get out.” And so they did. The crowd surged and swayed and struggled, and before long they saw that it was surging towards the entrance gate, and it took them with it. Just as they thrust through they found themselves pushed against a man, who good-naturedly drew a little back to save Meg from striking against his valise, which was a very substantial one. She looked up to thank him, and gave a little start. It was the man she had called “our man” the night before, when she spoke of him to Robin. And he gave them a sharp but friendly nod. “Hallo!” he exclaimed, “it’s you two again. You are going to the Fair!” Robin looked up at his shrewd face with a civil little grin. “Yes, sir; we are,” he answered. “Hope you’ll enjoy it,” said the man. “Big thing.” And he was pushed past them and soon lost in the crowd. |
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