Page:O Genteel Lady! (1926).pdf/22

 to the captain of the train. He would have put him out.'

'Oh, no, Cousin Pauline. Every one was most respectful. He saw I needed help and...'

It was useless. Pauline evidently knew the Truth, whether or not it existed. She tactfully changed the conversation.

'Patrick will fetch your things; we will go to the carriage. You are very fatigued.'

Lanice found, on stepping out into the grey station, that the cold weather of the central part of the State had been left behind. She knew by the smell of the air as it blew in under the train sheds that it had thawed all day and only now at sunset had stopped dripping and begun to freeze again. The station was confusing, but not as large as she had expected in so vast a metropolis.

'But,' Pauline defended her city, 'we have eight stations, you know, and some are much more sumptuous than the Western Railway Depot. Come this way; take my arm. There, those white horses are ours.'

The two young women climbed into the swaying open barouche and drew the bear rug about them. It was lighter on the street than in the train or station. Patrick packed in the baggage, mounted the box, and the ugly fat white horses jogged off up Kneeland Street. Lanice, who had her mother's fondness for clothes, looked at the animals critically. 'If I had them,' she thought, 'I'd have them painted a dark color; or perhaps longitudinally striped, like a