As the train started he swung himself off with a sad little "Be good to
yourself!"

"Thank the Lord we're under way at last!" cried Percival, fervently,
when the group at the station had been shut from view. "Isn't it just
heavenly!" exclaimed his sister.

"Think of having all of New York you want--being at home there--and not
having to look forward to this desolation of a place."

Mrs. Bines was neither depressed nor elated. She was maintaining that
calm level of submission to fate which had been her lifelong habit. The
journey and the new life were to be undertaken because they formed for
her the line of least resistance along which all energy must flow. Had
her children elected to camp for the remainder of their days in the
centre of the desert of Gobi, she would have faced that life with as
little sense of personal concern and with no more misgivings.

Down out of the maze of hills the train wound; and then by easy grades
after two days of travel down off the great plateau to where the plains
of Nebraska lay away to a far horizon in brown billows of withered
grass.

Then came the crossing of the sullen, sluggish Missouri, that highway
of an earlier day to the great Northwest; and after that the better
wooded and better settled lands of Iowa and Illinois.

"Now we're getting where Christians live," said Percival, with warm
appreciation.