Breakfast was served in the dining-car. Our friends secured seats close together, and made a jolly meal of it.
“Curious,” observed Fred, “to eat a breakfast twenty miles long!”
“That suits me!” laughed Tom, helping himself to griddle cakes.
“But it’s so pretty outside that I can’t stop to eat,” exclaimed Adelaide, with a nice little flush in her cheeks.
She had lived a very quiet, home-keeping life, the girls found. Everything was new and strange and wonderful to her.
“I should say somebody had been pretty careless with their camp-fires,” Randolph remarked, as they passed mile after mile of burned timber land, an hour or two later.
Mr. Houghton told them that thousands upon thousands of acres of forest near the railroad had been ruined in this way.
“Why,” asked Randolph, “how long has this railroad been built?”
Mr. Houghton thereupon gave them a brief account of the Canadian Pacific, one of the marvels of modern engineering.