"So is Dolly, Zara," said Bessie, dryly. "She's always wishing for things she doesn't really want at all, because she thinks they would be exciting."
That would have started an argument without fail, if Dolly had not just then had to devote her attention to something that she noticed before anyone else. She sniffed the air that came in through the car windows once or twice.
"I smell smoke," she said.. "And look at the sun! It's so funny and red. See, you can look at it without it hurting your eyes at all. And it's a good deal darker, the way it gets before a thunder shower, sometimes."
"She's right," said Bessie. "I believe the woods must be on fire somewhere near here."
"I'm afraid they are," said Eleanor Mercer, who had stopped in the aisle beside them and had overheard Bessie's remark. "But not very near. You know the smoke from a really big forest fire is often carried for miles and miles, if the wind holds steady."
"Well, it can't be so very far—not more than twenty or thirty miles, can it, Miss Eleanor?"
"It's impossible to say, but I have known the smoke from a fire two hundred miles away to make people uncomfortable. They can't smell it, but it darkens the air a little."
"Why, I had no idea of that!"
"Well, here's something stranger yet. I heard you all talking about volcanoes. A good many years ago there was a frightful eruption in Japan, or near Japan, rather, when a mountain called Krakatoa broke out. That was the greatest eruption we know anything about. And a long time afterward people began to notice that the sunsets were very beautiful half the way around the world from it, and no one knew why, until the scientists explained that it was the dust from the volcano!"
"Well, I hope this fire isn't where we are going!" said Dolly.