WHAT had happened to Marguerite was this.
She had never been to New York before, although she had traveled with her father and mother now and then in other directions. She knew nothing, of course, about the city save what she had gleaned from occasional references to it in novels. When the porter of the Pullman asked her before they reached Manhattan Transfer whether she was going uptown or downtown she looked at him bewildered for an instant. Then reasoning that an office building would likely be downtown, and she wanted to be near to the place where she intended going the first thing in the morning, she answered after that instant's hesitation,—
"Oh, yes, downtown. I'm going downtown."
"Then you get out at Manhattan Transfer, lady," said the porter eyeing her a bit questioningly, she thought, because she had said downtown at that time of night.
Manhattan Transfer looked wide and desolate and empty. There were few passengers so late and there seemed to be no official in charge. Marguerite stood aimlessly for a few minutes, looking this way and that, wandering up, and then down, looking off at the dim distance of stars and weird lights. Was this the great New York about which she had heard so much?
But at last a train came. A brakeman on the step, swinging a lantern, and yelling some unintelligible thing condescended to listen to her plea.
"Where you wantta go, lady? Uptown or downtown?" The same mystical question, and it must have been all wrong the way she answered it before.
"Oh, I don't know which," she cried, almost in tears, for she was suddenly realizing her lonely situation at this late hour. "I want to go to a good respectable hotel."
"You go uptown lady, then. You get on the next train that comes by, over that side of the platform; be 'long in five minutes now. Take you to the Pennsylvania Station, good hotel right across the street. All Aboard!"
And he swung away, leaving her more desolate than ever, for now the wind-swept platform was empty of the few travelers who had been waiting for this train, and Marguerite dared not go in search of any official who might be inside the shelters lest she miss her train. Thus it was that she arrived at the great station almost an hour later than the train by which she should have come. Emerging into the gloom, and climbing the midnight stairs into the wide upper area, she felt smaller and more alone even than when she had stood on the high barren sweep of Manhattan Transfer.