It was with the morning that we really began to take stock of our surroundings. The car was full of people; the air was foul and heavy; sounds of most abandoned snoring came from various quarters. We made up our berths and opened our windows; a grey mist hung on the trees and swept by the train, but the smell of it was grateful and refreshing. We washed our hands and faces, and were glad that Mr. Gaines had suggested taking our own towels and soap. Marjorie discovered that there was a stove on which tea might be made and we breakfasted out of our lunch baskets. By this time the other occupants of the car were astir. There were many women and children, and the degree in the social scale seemed to range from those with a considerable culture and a penchant for cleanliness to those who apparently interpreted the latter term with the greatest liberality. Several languages were spoken. Half-dressed men lolled in their berths, exposing swarthy arms and slabs of hairy chests, and slatternly women shuffled along the aisle, in imminent danger of tripping on their trailing skirts and disrobing themselves. Children whined or babbled, and, after the general disturbance of breakfast-making was over, raced up and down the aisle, occasionally tripping over a projecting foot or a suit-case, and raising a lusty but short-lived outcry. Some of the passengers understood only the barest essentials of English, and were plainly confused over the values of a strange currency. Whenever the conductor came through the car demanding tickets, which seemed to be unnecessarily often, they received him with panicky excitement or sullen stolidity. Our little party, although inexperienced in the customs of travel, had the great advantage, which the native-born never fully appreciates, of being in its own country. We were citizens of it, and we had a well-developed Anglo-Saxon pride in what that meant. We understood the language, the currency, and the customs of the people. Brass buttons had no terrors for us. We had a general knowledge of the geography of the country through which we travelled, and we knew, with reasonable definiteness, where we were going. We had enough money in our pockets to bring us back home, if that should be necessary. Most outstanding fact of all, we had homes to come back to, should we so desire. And yet, with all these advantages, as the day wore on, a profound melancholy, an intense loneliness, settled upon us. During the excitement of our preparations we had not felt the strain, the lesions of breaking away from parents and friends and surroundings made dear by a thousand tender associations of childhood. But now all these things rose up within me, and filled my heart and my throat. . . .