After a short but very rough ride the train stopped at a small station, and a man called, "Pompeii!" as he walked quickly down the platform unlocking the doors of the compartments.
As the Sunbonnet Babies stepped from the train, they expected to see the famous ruined city, but they saw only a few whitewashed houses which did not look ruined at all.
Molly and May felt as if they were in another world
"O father!" cried Molly. "People are living in this town. This can't be Pompeii."
"Yes it is," said her father. "This is new Pompeii. The old city which we have come to see is only a short walk from here."
When they finally passed through the gate into the city, which had lain buried more than seventeen hundred years, Molly and May felt as if they were in another world. They walked down the narrow, quiet streets, looking into the empty shops and houses, trying to imagine twenty thousand people living and working and playing here so long, long ago. The smoking volcano not far away made them wonder what the people were doing when the hot ashes buried their city.
The guide said many of the people probably escaped, though some stayed to care for their homes and were buried in them. He told how a little mother bird was found sitting on her nest, buried by the ashes. She would not leave the little eggs that needed her wings for protection. He told, too, how a Roman soldier had been found standing at his place of duty when all his friends had run for safety.
Many of the streets were not wide enough for two small carriages to pass, and the sidewalks were so narrow that the Sunbonnet Babies could hardly walk side by side on them.
Molly and May thought it great fun to jump across the streets on the high stepping-stones which they found at every crossing. They played they were dainty ladies of two thousand years ago who did not want to soil their pretty shoes.