"'Must I be carried to the skies
On flowery beds of ease,
While others fought to win the prize,
And sailed through bloody seas?'"
"Now be careful, and change at White River Junction," were Mr. Blossom's parting words at the station. "After that you go right through to New York."
"I 'll take good care, don't you any of you worry 'bout me!" She waved her handkerchief from the back platform of the car to the little group she was leaving,--Mr. and Mrs. Blossom, Rose, March and Hazel, Captain Spillkins and Susan Wood, with Elvira and Melissa. She was inflated with heroic resolve, and felt ennobled to be going forth to do battle, as she termed it to herself, for her Country's cause. Moreover she was seeing the world, and even at the start she found it most interesting, for she had been but ten miles at most by train, and here she was speeding towards White River Junction, distant forty miles from Barton's River.
She longed to communicate her enthusiasm to the occupants of the car, but found only one opportunity. She offered to hold a baby, one of a family of five, while the mother fed and watered the other four. She continued to dandle it recklessly till the woman protested:
"Guess you ain't had a fam'ly," she remarked sternly, rescuing her child; "a woman of your age ought to know better 'n to shake a baby up so when he 's teethin'--'t ain't good for their brains--like enough bring on chol'ry morbis." She pulled down the small clothes, turned the atom over on its stomach, and patted its back with a broad hand and a dove-like settling motion that bespoke the mater-familias.
Maria-Ann looked out of the window. True, she had n't any family--only Grandmarm Little and Aunt Mandy's one daughter who had just come to visit them. What was Aunt Tryphosa doing now? She was dreaming again, and before she could realize it, the brakeman called, "White River Junction! Change cars for all points south via Windsor, Springfield, New York."
Hearing that, Maria-Ann felt as if she had already travelled a thousand miles, so far away seemed Mount Hunger and its uneventful life.
She found herself on the platform. She had been so confident of taking care of herself--and now! She looked helplessly about. Trains to the right of her, trains to the left of her, trains in front of her and behind her switched, and shifted, and thundered. Engine-bells, dinner-bells, train-bells; stentorian voices of baggage-men, brakemen, call-men; frantic women, screaming babies, hurrying porters, indifferent travellers, fashionable women and city men; farmers, children, baskets, shawl-straps, dress-suit cases, golf bags, boys; dogs, yelping and crying, in arms or in leash; canaries in their wooden cages shrilling over all; and hither and thither and yon a bustling, and rustling, and rattling, and roaring, and clanking, and hissing, and shrieking, and hurrying, and scurrying, and pushing, and hauling, and prodding, and rushing! For a minute Maria-Ann was dazed and almost stunned. Then her courage rose to the occasion. This was the famous Junction of which she had heard so much. This was the great world. This was Life!
"I 'll stand stock-still an' wait till it clears up a little. I 've got an hour here, an' mebbe I 'll see somebody from Barton's," she said to herself, and had just put down her valise when a hoarse voice cried in her ear,--"Hi, there! get out of the way!"
She dodged a baggage truck piled high with toppling trunks, only to be caught in the surging, living stream, and carried with it up a step into the restaurant of the station.