She was immensely stirred by the prospect. She made herself, in the brief interval between the decision and the beginning of the journey, a new shirt-waist of handkerchief linen. It took the last cent of her allowance to buy the material, and she was obliged, by a secret arrangement with her father, to discount the future, in order to have some spending-money in the city.
Mrs. Marshall was quite disappointed by the dullness of Sylvia's perceptions during that momentous first trip, which she had looked forward to as an occasion for widening the girls' horizon to new interests. Oddly enough it was Judith, usually so much less quick than Sylvia, who asked the intelligent questions and listened attentively to her mother's explanations about the working of the air-brakes, and the switching systems in railroad yards, and the harvesting of the crops in the flat, rich country gliding past the windows. It was quite evident that not a word of this highly instructive talk reached Sylvia, sitting motionless, absorbing every detail of her fellow-passengers' aspect, in a sort of trance of receptivity. She scarcely glanced out of the windows, except when the train stopped at the station in a large town, when she transferred her steady gaze to the people coming and going from the train. "Just look, Sylvia, at those blast-furnaces!" cried her mother as they passed through the outskirts of an industrial town. "They have to keep them going, you know, night and day."
"Oh, do they? What for?" asked Judith, craning her neck to watch the splendid leap of the flames into the darkness.
"Because they can't allow the ore to become—" Mrs. Marshall wondered why, during her conscientious explanation of blast-furnaces, Sylvia kept her eyes dully fixed on her hands on her lap. Sylvia was, as a matter of fact, trying imaginary bracelets on her slim, smooth, white wrists. The woman opposite her wore bracelets.
"Isn't it fine," remarked the civic-minded Mrs. Marshall, "to see all these little prairie towns so splendidly lighted?"
"I hadn't noticed them," said Sylvia, her gaze turned on the elegant nonchalance of a handsome, elderly woman ahead of her. Her mother looked at her askance, and thought that children are unaccountable.
There were four of the Chicago days, and such important events marked them that each one had for all time a physiognomy of its own. Years afterwards when their travels had far outrun that first journey, Sylvia and Judith could have told exactly what occurred on any given day of that sojourn, as "on the third day we were in Chicago."
The event of the first day was, of course, the meeting with Aunt Victoria. They went to see her in a wonderful hotel, entering through a classic court, with a silver-plashing fountain in the middle, and slim Ionic pillars standing up white and glorious out of masses of palms. This dreamlike spot of beauty was occupied by an incessantly restless throng of lean, sallow-faced men in sack-coats, with hats on the backs of their heads and cigars in the corners of their mouths. The air was full of tobacco smoke and the click of heels on the marble pavement. At one side was a great onyx-and-marble desk, looking like a soda-water fountain without the silver faucets, and it was the thin-cheeked, elegant young-old man behind this structure who gave instructions whereby Mrs. Marshall and her two daughters found their way to Aunt Victoria's immense and luxurious room. She was very glad to see them, shaking hands with her sister-in-law in the respectful manner which that lady always seemed to inspire in her, and embracing her two tall young nieces with a fervor which melted Sylvia's heart back to her old childish adoration.
"What beautiful children you have, Barbara!" cried Mrs. Marshall-Smith, holding Judith off at arm's length and looking from her to Sylvia; "although I suppose I ought not to tell them that!" She looked at Sylvia with an affectionate laugh. "Will you be spoiled if I tell you you are very pretty?" she asked.
"I can't think of anything but how pretty you are!" said Sylvia, voicing honestly what was in her mind.