might. Then she hung out of the window, as far out as she could, till
her hat was nearly carried off. This was the first railway journey she
had made by herself, and there was an intoxicating sense of freedom in
being locked in, alone, within the narrow compass of the compartment.
She was at liberty to do everything that had previously been forbidden
her: she walked up and down the carriage, jumped from one seat to
another, then lay flat on her back singing to herself, and watching the
telegraph poles fly past the windows, and the wires mount and
descend.--But now came a station and, though the train did not stop,
she sat up, in order that people might see she was travelling alone.

She grew hungry and attacked her lunch, and it turned out that Mother
had not provided too much after all. When she had finished, had brushed
herself clean of crumbs and handled, till her finger-tips were sore, the
pompous half-crown she had found in her pocket, she fell to thinking of
them at home, and of what they would now be doing. It was between two
and three o'clock: the sun would be full on the flagstones of the back
verandah; inch by inch Pin and Leppie would be driven away to find a
cooler spot for their afternoon game, while little Frank slept, and
Sarah splashed the dinner-dishes in the brick-floored kitchen. Mother
sat sewing, and she would still be sitting there, still sewing, when the
shadow of the fir tree, which at noon was shrunken like a dwarf, had
stretched to giant size, and the children had opened the front gate to
play in the shade of the public footpath.--At the thought of these
shadows, of all the familiar things she would not see again for months
to come, Laura's eyelids began to smart.

They had flashed through several stations; now they stopped; and her
mind was diverted by the noise and bustle. As the train swung into
motion again, she fell into a pleasanter line of thought. She painted to