Bartlett broke in upon her reveries. "See that hill?" and he waved toward the slope ahead of them.
Henrietta nodded, still wrapped in her dream. "The hill of life," said she, "with glory at its top."
"A railroad," said Bartlett, prosaically matter-of-fact, "a railroad has been cut through the hill. See, there go the children, suddenly out of sight."
Henrietta came back to earth. "How do you know? Maybe there is just a steep incline the other side and that is why they disappeared so quickly."
"No, there is a cut up there. Don't you notice how abrupt it looks, and there are no trees or bushes. They haven't had time to grow since the cut was made. And those big lumps, see, covered with grass, they are the earth thrown up out of the cut. It's the Grand Trunk. It runs through Maine, you know, into New Hampshire."
Henrietta nodded and frowned. "There is no more romance," and she threw out her hands with a graceful gesture of hopeless disappointment. "It went when the first steam-engine came."
Bartlett looked at her, amused, with a man's tolerance. "What do you want romance for? A railroad pays better."
"Pays, pays, pays," cried Henrietta. "I want something that doesn't pay—that isn't associated with returns. You men have nothing but a bank-book for a heart. It's so lovely here, so quiet. Don't you feel it? With the shadows creeping across the pasture? I was young and beautiful—"
"And a princess."
"No, a goose maid. My hair was brown and thick and hung over each shoulder in two long braids. I was bare-headed, with sleeves rolled to the elbows of my shapely arms—"