"My dear," said Mrs. Carroll, "when you've been with us a little while you'll realize how close we are to primitive conditions. To-day you break the horse you mean to ride next week. To-morrow you kill the steer or the pig or the chickens that were your pets to-day."
"I suppose it must be so always in the country, but you can't be very primitive here with a large town near by and a railroad."
"In reality we are only as far from the Asheville Court House as the people on the upper boundary of the Bronx are from Castle Garden; but in point of convenience, owing to the scarcity of trains and their poor arrangement, we are almost as near to Washington."
"Still, the railroad has opened the country and given the farmers new markets," asserted John.
"Undoubtedly; but that is not an unmixed good, in my opinion," said Mrs. Carroll, stoutly. "They sell more cabbages and apples, but they buy cheap fabrics and ready-made clothing in place of the stout homespun that the women used to weave."
"You'd be surprised," said Patton, "to know how little the country people use the railroad. There was an example of it day before yesterday. A man from McDowell's Creek, about six miles from Flora, took his first train-ride since the road was put through, fifteen years ago."
"How extraordinary that seems! It was the day of his life, I suppose." Katrina's eyes were large with amazement.
"In a way it was," said Bob, dryly, "for in Asheville he celebrated his adventures not wisely, but too well, and on the way out he fell from the platform and was killed."
"Bob, how can you be so flippant?" objected Sydney to the crestfallen young man. "It seems a terrible end."
"All sudden deaths seem terrible to us who are left behind," said Mrs. Carroll; "but even such an ending does not give us the shock that it would if we did not live in a community accustomed to the accidents consequent upon every man's carrying a revolver. It's a bad habit. I hope you boys don't do it."