Toward noon the train ran into a violent summer storm.  The sky grew black, the lightning flashed, the wind raved, the rain fell in gusts.  The storm was at its height when Kate quit watching it and arose, preoccupied with her first trip to a dining car, thinking about how little food she could order and yet avoid a hunger headache.  The twisting whirlwind struck her face as she stepped from the day coach to go to the dining car.  She threw back her head and sucked her lungs full of the pure, rain-chilled air.  She was accustomed to being out in storms, she liked them.  One second she paused to watch the gale sweeping the fields, the next a twitch at her hair caused her to throw up her hands and clutch wildly at nothing.  She sprang to the step railing and leaned out in time to see her wonderful hat whirl against the corner of the car, hold there an instant with the pressure of the wind, then slide down, draw under, and drop across the rail, where passing wheels ground it to pulp.

Kate stood very still a second, then she reached up and tried to pat the disordered strands of hair into place.  She turned and went back into the day coach, opened the bandbox, and put on the sailor.  She resumed her old occupation of thinking things over.  All the joy had vanished from the day and the trip.  Looking forward, it had seemed all right to defy custom and Nancy Ellen’s advice, and do as she pleased.  Looking backward, she saw that she had made a fool of herself in the estimation of everyone in the car by not wearing the sailor, which was suitable for her journey, and would have made no such mark for a whirling wind.

She found travelling even easier than any one had told her.  Each station was announced.  When she alighted, there were conveyances to take her and her luggage to a hotel, patronized almost exclusively by teachers, near the schools and lecture halls.  Large front suites and rooms were out of the question for Kate, but luckily a tiny corner room at the back of the building was empty and when Kate specified how long she would remain, she secured it at a less figure than she had expected to pay.  She began by almost starving herself at supper in order to save enough money to replace her hat with whatever she could find that would serve passably, and be cheap enough.  That far she proceeded stoically; but when night settled and she stood in her dressing jacket brushing her hair, something gave way.  Kate dropped on her bed and cried into her pillow, as she never had cried before about anything.  It was not all about the hat.  While she was at it, she shed a few tears about every cruel thing that had happened to her since she could remember that she had borne tearlessly at the time.  It was a deluge that left her breathless and exhausted.  When she finally sat up, she found the room so close, she gently opened her door and peeped into the hall.  There was a door opening on an outside veranda, running across the end of the building and the length of the front.