It was only for the first two days and nights of their journey that they had this comfortable little room. On the morning of the third day they reached Kansas City, and there they had to change cars. They sat in a large and crowded waiting-room, while Mr. March went to see about the tickets. Nelly and Rob looked with great astonishment on every thing they saw. They seemed already to have come into a new world. The people looked strange, and a great many of them were speaking German. There were whole families--father, mother, and perhaps half-a-dozen little children--sitting on the railway platforms, on big chests, which were tied up with strong ropes. They had great feather-beds, too, tied in bundles and bulging out all round the ropes. Their faces were very red, and their clothes were old and patched: if Nelly had met them in the lanes of Mayfield, she would have taken them for beggars; but here they were travelling just like herself, going the same way too, for she watched several of them getting into the same train. Then there were groups of men in leather clothes, with their boots reaching up to their knees, and powder-horns slung across their shoulders. They all carried rifles: some of them had two or three; and one of them, as he stepped on the platform, threw down a dead deer; another carried a splendid pair of antlers. Nelly took hold of Rob's hand and walked very cautiously nearer the dead deer. "Oh, Rob!" she said, "it's a real deer. There is a picture of one in my Geography with just such horns as these." Nelly was carrying Mrs. Napoleon hugged up very tight in her arms; but she had not observed that, in the jostling of the crowd, Mrs. Napoleon had somehow turned her head round as if she were looking backward over Nelly's shoulder. Neither had she observed that two little girls were following closely behind her, jabbering German as fast as they could, and pointing to the doll. Presently, she felt her gown pulled gently. She turned round, and there were the two little girls, both with outstretched hands, talking as fast as magpies, and much more unintelligibly. Each of them took hold of Nelly's gown again, and made signs to her that she should let them take the doll. They looked so eager that it seemed as if they would snatch the doll out of her hands: the words they spoke sounded so thick and strange that it half frightened Nelly. "Oh, dear me, Rob!" she exclaimed; "do tell them to go away. Go away, good little girls, go away!" she said, pleadingly. "I can't let you take her."