"No-o--come to think of it, he hasn't," replied Carley, reluctantly.
"Aunt Mary, you hurt my feelings."
"Well, child, I'm glad to learn your feelings are hurt," returned the
aunt. "I'm sure, Carley, that underneath all this--this blase ultra
something you've acquired, there's a real heart. Only you must hurry and
listen to it--or--"
"Or what?" queried Carley.
Aunt Mary shook her gray head sagely. "Never mind what. Carley, I'd like
your idea of the most significant thing in Glenn's letter."
"Why, his love for me, of course!" replied Carley.
"Naturally you think that. But I don't. What struck me most were his
words, 'out of the West.' Carley, you'd do well to ponder over them."
"I will," rejoined Carley, positively. "I'll do more. I'll go out to his
wonderful West and see what he meant by them."
Carley Burch possessed in full degree the prevailing modern craze for
speed. She loved a motor-car ride at sixty miles an hour along a smooth,
straight road, or, better, on the level seashore of Ormond, where on
moonlight nights the white blanched sand seemed to flash toward her.
Therefore quite to her taste was the Twentieth Century Limited which was
hurtling her on the way to Chicago. The unceasingly smooth and even
rush of the train satisfied something in her. An old lady sitting in an
adjoining seat with a companion amused Carley by the remark: "I wish we
didn't go so fast. People nowadays haven't time to draw a comfortable
breath. Suppose we should run off the track!"
Carley had no fear of express trains, or motor cars, or transatlantic
liners; in fact, she prided herself in not being afraid of anything.
But she wondered if this was not the false courage of association with
a crowd. Before this enterprise at hand she could not remember anything
she had undertaken alone. Her thrills seemed to be in abeyance to the
end of her journey. That night her sleep was permeated with the steady
low whirring of the wheels. Once, roused by a jerk, she lay awake in
the darkness while the thought came to her that she and all her fellow
passengers were really at the mercy of the engineer. Who was he, and
did he stand at his throttle keen and vigilant, thinking of the
lives intrusted to him? Such thoughts vaguely annoyed Carley, and she
dismissed them.
A long half-day wait in Chicago was a tedious preliminary to the second
part of her journey. But at last she found herself aboard the California
Limited, and went to bed with a relief quite a stranger to her. The
glare of the sun under the curtain awakened her. Propped up on her
pillows, she looked out at apparently endless green fields or pastures,
dotted now and then with little farmhouses and tree-skirted villages.
This country, she thought, must be the prairie land she remembered lay
west of the Mississippi.