already darkening. The train on its little single track bored on towards Boston. 'Boston—Boston' sang the wheels upon the tracks, and Lanice, released from her bad dreams, had, as the train curved, a glimpse of foul shallow water criss-crossed with tracks and carelessly filled with ashes and the sordid débris of a city. The sight was not ugly, for the sunset reflected in the dirty Back Bay and beyond it, rising grandly in stages of staggered red-brick buildings vivified by the spires of churches, crowned by the bald dome of the State House, delicately veiled by smoke—loveliest of cities—beyond the pink waste of water was Boston!
The girl was frightened. She wished that she had stayed in Amherst with Papa, until she thought of Augustus and the pastor's lean she-wolf of a wife, and the social structure of Amherst tumbling about her ears. She knew she could not endure that. Better the unknown terrors of a strange city and strange relatives than the familiar, impossible situation at home. She had telegraphed her cousin Pauline that she was coming, and then, before she had had time to receive an answer, had set out. This Pauline she had never seen, but from a correspondence which had started two years before, when Pauline had tried to interest Lanice in writing a series of articles about women's rights for the 'Godey's Lady's Book,' she guessed that she was very purposeful, very high-minded, and probably the possessor of a beautiful soul. A beautiful face was undoubtedly too much to expect. She was wealthy, the only child of a retired merchant
