Phyl, looking like a lost dog, confused by travel and dumb from dejection, had little in common with this lady, nor did a rough passage across the Atlantic extend their knowledge of one another, for Mrs. Van Dusen scarcely appeared from her state-room till the evening when, the great ship coming to her moorings, New York sketched itself and its blazing skyscrapers against the gloom before the astonished eyes of Phyl.
PART II
CHAPTER I
Holyhead, Liverpool, New York, each of these stopping places had impressed upon Phyl the distance she was putting between herself and her home, making her feel that if this business was not death it was, at least, a very good imitation of dying.
But the south-bound express from New York was to show her just what people may be expected to feel after they are dead.
America had been for Phyl little more than a geographical expression. “Uncle Tom’s Cabin,” “The Last of the Mohicans,” “The Settlers in Canada” and “Round the World in Eighty Days,” had given her pictures, and from these she had built up a vague land of snow and forests, log huts, plains, Red Indians, runaway negroes and men with bowie knives.
New York had given this fantastic idea a rough joggle, the south-bound express tumbled it all to pieces.
Forests and mountains and plains would have been familiar to her imagination, but the south-bound express was producing for her inspection quite different things from these.
New Jersey with its populous towns, for instance, towns she never could have imagined or dreamed of, filled with people whose existence she could not picture.