"She didn't say anything in particular—she just talked."
"What did she talk, then?"
"She talked all sorts of things; she doesn't like them at all. She doesn't consider them nice."
Lassie was silent. She was conscious of a painful lack of admiration for either Mrs. Lathbun or her daughter, herself.
A freight train began to roll by and ended conversation for the time being. Alva went to the window and stood there. After a while she spoke musingly.
"Everything must have a purpose. Every action has to have a thought behind it. If we could only see through the veil!"
The train, which had come to a standstill, now began to move again, cracking and straining at first, then going on with a terrific roar.
"They serve their purpose surely—the freight trains," Alva said; "even if they did nothing else, their noise accomplishes something. One might forget life so easily in this corner of the world, if it were not for them."
Lassie laughed. "But they serve a few more purposes than that."
"Yes, of course. I never deny the broader meaning in life—if the world's view is the broader one—but trains mean such a great deal besides what they carry, in a little bit of a town. I used to think that they came pretty close to being all the meaning that life had to the people there, and I still wonder sometimes if it isn't so. I've lived here well over one week now, and really it seems to me that the trains, their comings and goings, and whether they do them on time or not, are the only topics of conversation that are ever broached."