Pretty soon the moon came up in the east. It was almost full, and, as it came up slowly in sight, it looked like a great circle of fire. Rob and Nelly both cried out, when they first saw it:-- "Oh, mamma! oh, papa! see that fire!" In a very few minutes it was up in full sight, and then they saw what it was. "Dear me! only the moon, after all," said Rob; "I hoped it was a big fire." CHAPTER IV A NIGHT IN A SLEEPING-CAR The moonlight was so beautiful that Mrs. March did not like to go back into the car; and Rob and Nelly begged so hard to sit up, that she let them stay long past their bedtime. At last she exclaimed:-- "Come, come! this won't do! We must go to bed," and she opened the car door. As soon as she looked in she started back, so that she nearly knocked Mr. March and Nelly off the platform. "Why, what has happened?" she said. Mr. March laughed. "Oh, nothing," he said: "this is the way a sleeping-car always looks at night." Curtains were let down on each side the aisle its whole length. It was very dark, and the aisle looked very narrow. Not a human being was in sight. "Where are our sections?" said Mrs. March. "These are ours, I think," said Mr. March, pulling open a curtain on the left. "Let my curtain alone," called somebody from inside, "Go away." Mr. March had opened the wrong curtain. "Oh, I beg your pardon, madam," he said, much mortified that he should have broken open a lady's bedroom. Mrs. March and Rob and Nelly stood close together in the middle of the aisle, at their wits' end. They did not dare to open another curtain, for fear it should be somebody's else bedroom, and not their own. "I'll call Ben," said Mr. March; "he'll know." But Ben was nowhere to be found. At last they found him sound asleep in a little state-room at the end of the car. "Ben, come show us which are our sections," said Mr. March. Ben was very sleepy. He came stumbling down the aisle, rubbing his eyes. "Reckon there is your berths; I made 'em up all ready for you," said Ben, and pulled open the very curtain Mr. March had opened before. "Oh! don't open that one; there's a lady in there," cried Mrs. March; but she was too late. Ben had thrown the curtains wide open. The same angry voice as before called out:-- "I wish you'd let my curtain alone. What are you about?" "Done made a mistake this time, sure," said Ben, composedly drawing the curtains together again; but not before Mrs. March and Nelly and Rob had had time to see into the bed, and had seen that it held the mother with five children. There they all lay as snug as you please: the three little ones packed like herrings in a box, across the foot of the bed, and the two others on the inside; and the mother lying on the outer edge almost in the aisle. As Ben pushed back the curtains, she muttered:-- "There ain't any room to spare in this berth, if that's what you're looking for." Rob and Nelly gave a smothered laugh at this.