“You know how we used to play ‘hunt the thimble,’” said Robin, “and how, when any one came near the place where it was hidden, we said, ‘Warm—warmer—warmer still—hot!’ It’s like that now. We have been getting warmer and warmer every minute, and now we are getting——”
“We shall be in in a minute,” said a big man at the end of the car, and he stood up and began to take down his things.
“Hot,” said Robin, with an excited little laugh. “Meg, we’re not going—going—going any more. Look out of the window.”
“We are steaming into the big dépôt,” cried Meg. “How big it is! What crowds of people! Robin, we are there!”
Robin bent down to pick up their satchel; the people all rose in their seats and began to move in a mass down the aisle toward the door. Everybody seemed suddenly to become eager and in a hurry, as if they thought the train would begin to move again and carry them away. Some were expecting friends to meet them, some were anxious about finding accommodations. Those who knew each other talked, asked questions over people’s shoulders, and there was a general anxiety about valises, parcels, and umbrellas. Robin and Meg were pressed back into their section by the crowd, against which they were too young to make headway.
“We shall have to wait until the grown-up people have passed by,” Rob said.
But the crowd in the aisle soon lost its compactness, and they were able to get out. The porter, who stood on the platform near the steps, looked at them curiously, and glanced behind them to see who was with them, but he said nothing.
It seemed to the two as if all the world must have poured itself into the big dépôt or be passing through it. People were rushing about; friends were searching for one another, pushing their way through the surging crowd; some were greeting each other with exclamations and hand-shaking, and stopping up the way; there was a Babel of voices, a clamor of shouts within the covered place, and from outside came a roar of sound rising from the city.
For a few moments Robin and Meg were overwhelmed. They did not quite know what to do; everybody pushed past and jostled them. No one was ill-natured, but no one had time to be polite. They were so young and so strange to all such worlds of excitement and rush, involuntarily they clutched each other’s hands after their time-honored fashion, when they were near each other and overpowered. The human vortex caught them up and carried them along, not knowing where they were going.
“We seem so little!” gasped Meg. “There—there are so many people! Rob, Rob, where are we going?”