"I must have a clear mind," she said, "and stop when I choose, and where I choose, or the trip won't be a speck of good. It's nobody's business how I manage my affairs, and you chits needn't strike in to be the first." So in this lady's ample care Rose and Violet made the long journey, and enjoyed every scrap of it. The meals in the dining car, and (I'm afraid) the bunks in the so-called sleeper; even the small delays, for then they could look out to better advantage; and Mrs. Congressman voted them the two best girls she had ever taken anywhere. "Always ready for breakfast," she said, "and always willing to wait. It was as good as music to hear them laugh when we had to switch off on the side track, or when folks jammed past them to dinner; it sweetened the whole car; curled everybody's feathers...." It was true, and I think would have been, even on a journey not into "Fairyland," though of course that helped. But the two were very quiet in their eager looking; the laugh and the exclamation were low-toned and well-bred. They asked sensible questions, and not too many even of them. Only when they got talking of Magnus, then indeed, the words came, with such sparkles and dimples and exultation, that Mrs. Congressman began to think her husband had done a bright thing for the country, when he gave that young soldier his place. But no one else in the car found out that they had a brother at West Point, and were on their way to see him; nor that their escort was the wife of an Hon. M. C.; such cheap fame our two girls had not learned to seek. And thus it was a delightful little party that after some hours of rest, and a late breakfast, bestowed themselves in a palace car of the 11.30 train, and went swaying and swinging up the river. People may say they have seen the Hudson, but never before as it is to-day, or as it will be to-morrow. The tide, the wind, the time of year, the temperature, the magnetic conditions, join hands in an endless chain of new effects. With a blue sky it is one thing, and will change its complexion on the instant, with the shadow of a passing cloud. To-day, in a frolic of white caps racing down before the north wind, and to-morrow rolling up in dull leaden surges, with a southern Banshee at its back. Now lapping the shore with sweetest whispers, now decked with a fringe of winter ice. Then frozen over from shore to shore, fitting in among the hills like an accurately cut sheet of white paper. But living, even then, with mysterious cracks and reports, with little plashes, where the tide breaks out along the edge.