"And Miss Elwell?"
Miss Elwell was quite the prettiest woman on board, and seemed to have plenty of attention—just like the girls I remembered.
"Miss Elwell is a civil engineer," said my sister.
"It's horrid," I said. "It's perfectly horrid! And aren't there any women left?"
"There's Aunt Dorcas," said Nellie, mischievously, "and Cousin Drusilla. You remember Drusilla?"
[CHAPTER II]
The day after to-morrow! I was to see it the day after to-morrow—this strange, new, abhorrent world!
The more I considered what bits of information I had gleaned already, the more I disliked what lay before me. In the first blazing light of returned memory and knowledge, the first joy of meeting my sister, the hope of seeing home again, I had not distinguished very sharply between what was new to my bewildered condition and what was new indeed—new to the world as well as to me. But now a queer feeling of disproportion and unreality began to haunt me.
As my head cleared, and such knowledge as I was now gathering began to help towards some sense of perspective and relation, even my immediate surroundings began to assume a sinister importance.
Any change, to any person, is something of a shock, though sometimes a beneficial one. Changes too sudden, and too great, are hard to bear, for any one. But who can understand the peculiar horror of my unparalleled experience?