Once more the morning, and with it new and wonderful sensations that dispelled her sorrows; the ferry, the olive-green river rolling in the morning sun, alive with dodging, hurrying craft, each bent upon its destination with an energy, relentlessness, and selfishness of purpose that fascinated Honora.  Each, with its shrill, protesting whistle, seemed to say:  “My business is the most important.  Make way for me.”  And yet, through them all, towering, stately, imperturbable, a great ocean steamer glided slowly towards the bay, by very might and majesty holding her way serene and undisturbed, on a nobler errand.  Honora thrilled as she gazed, as though at last her dream were coming true, and she felt within her the pulse of the world’s artery.  That irksome sense of spectatorship seemed to fly, and she was part and parcel now of the great, moving things, with sure pinions with which to soar.  Standing rapt upon the forward deck of the ferry, she saw herself, not an atom, but one whose going and coming was a thing of consequence.  It seemed but a simple step to the deck of that steamer when she, too, would be travelling to the other side of the world, and the journey one of the small incidents of life.

The ferry bumped into its slip, the windlasses sang loudly as they took up the chains, the gates folded back, and Honora was forced with the crowd along the bridge-like passage to the right.  Suddenly she saw Cousin Eleanor and the girls awaiting her.

“Honora,” said Edith, when the greetings were over and they were all four in the carriage, which was making its way slowly across the dirty and irregularly paved open space to a narrow street that opened between two saloons, “Honora, you don’t mean to say that Anne Rory made that street dress?  Mother, I believe it’s better-looking than the one I got at Bremer’s.”

“It’s very simple,”, said Honora.

“And she looks fairly radiant,” cried Edith, seizing her cousin’s hand.  “It’s quite wonderful, Honora; nobody would ever guess that you were from the West, and that you had spent the whole summer in St. Louis.”

Cousin Eleanor smiled a little as she contemplated Honora, who sat, fascinated, gazing out of the window at novel scenes.  There was a colour in her cheeks and a sparkle in her eyes.  They had reached Madison Square.  Madison Square, on a bright morning in late September, seen for the first time by an ambitious young lady who had never been out of St. Louis!  The trimly appointed vehicles, the high-stepping horses, the glittering shops, the well-dressed women and well-groomed men—­all had an esprit de corps which she found inspiring.  On such a morning, and amidst such a scene, she felt that there was no limit to the possibilities of life.