“It’s a great town, Miss Beth,” said Anna Mary. “There’s folks in it, like your uncle, who live like princes of the blood, going from glory to glory. And there’s many more comfortable by hard workin’, and there’s more than there should be livin’ not much better than in ash barrels, like the poor homeless cats you do be seein’ after dark. But for the most part, yes; it’s like this, only more so. And you might be puttin’ on your hat now, Miss Beth, for we’re gettin’ in.” The train slowed up, stopped. Anna Mary took Beth’s hand and led her, bewildered, not sure whether she were awake or dreaming, down a long, cold concrete avenue between tracks, through hurrying crowds, under electric lights, into a screaming, rushing, roaring street of cabmen, travelers, trolleys. This was New York! Anna Mary put Beth into an electric cab, gave an address, and stepped in herself. The doors that shut them in like a sort of folding lid closed upon them and the cab started. Never before had Beth ridden in a vehicle running without a track, without visible power to propel it. She held her breath. The cab skidded along through the crowded cross street, turned a corner sharply, swung into a broad avenue alive with other electric cabs, horse-drawn cabs, fine carriages, two-story green stages with winding stairs up their backs, but with no horses to draw them; past streams of people going both ways, bright-faced girls, men in queer high hats that looked like mourning to Beth, with swinging coats that showed shining white linen, or black silk mufflers. She caught glimpses of lovely ladies in carriages, hatless, with flowers or feathers in their hair, gleaming with jewels as their beautiful cloaks parted, gowned in silks of the most exquisite tints. She saw others, walking, with lace mantillas over their hair, like the Spanish ladies in her geography, and with long coats that showed only beautiful ruffles as their wearers held up skirts and hurried to the theatre. She passed tall houses, some of them dark and solemn, some all alight, with pictures, great chairs, all sorts of brilliance, revealed through their lace-draped windows. “Oh, am I really, really here? Am I seeing it, truly, Anna Mary?” gasped Beth. Anna Mary caught her meaning. “You’re awake, Miss Beth; it’s New York fast enough,” she said with the pride of an adopted citizen in the vast, splendid city. CHAPTER III THE CHANGELING The cab stopped before a tall house, dressed in brown from head to foot. “It looks like Aunt Rebecca when she has on her brown mohair,” thought Beth, and the humorous resemblance cheered away a slight feeling of fear that crept over the little girl as she realized that she had come to stay long in this big brown stone house, so unlike the brown house in the village from which she had come. The cab doors parted and swung back without a touch. It was magic, Beth thought, till she remembered the driver somewhere up aloft behind her.