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provisions the Travelers had wrapped up in carefully saved butcher-paper for
     her, and that seemed to be enough for him to leave her to her own devices.
    In all her life, she had never been on a train. All the traveling that the circus
     had done had been under its own power; the horses that pulled the circus wagons and
     the living-wagons did double duty, helping to erect and take down the circus and performing
     in the acts. She was a little nervous, and kept one eye on the station clock. Three
     trains arrived and departed before hers pulled into the station, and at least the
     stationmaster took the time to leave his post and gesture at her to let her know for
     certain it was hers. She went all the way to the rear, scuttling along as fast as
     she could, until she came to the third-class carriages. They were very old, and the
     windows had been put all the way down, but as warm as it had been, that was not exactly
     looming large as a defect in Katie’s mind.
    She took the first open door and the first empty seat, squeezing herself into the
     corner next to the window so as to make the most room for anyone else who might come
     along at the next station. There were only a few other people in the carriage, and
     all of them seemed to be dozing. None were in her compartment. At the very back she
     could just see what appeared to be an entire family arranged along the back bench.
     She was barely in place when the conductor came along, closing all the doors with
     a
bang,
and the train started again.
    She quickly came to the conclusion that, on the whole, she preferred riding in or
     on the front bench of a wagon.
    Although the countryside sped by at a rate that was alarming to someone who was used
     to plodding horses that could not be urged to a speed faster than an amble, the entire
     carriage shook, rattled, and swayed on the rails. The hard wooden bench on which she
     sat was no worse than the driving bench on a wagon, but it vibrated under her, and
     every shock to the carriage was transmitted in a most unforgiving way to the bench.
    This was not an express. That fact had been made very clear to her when she purchased
     her ticket. Expresses were more expensive. So they had not been underway for very
     long—not nearly long enough for Katie to get used to the speed—before they began to
     slow again and pulled into another station.
    More people got in this time. Katie was alarmed when some stocky young men looked
     into her compartment, but two older women who might have been their mothers took one
     look at her and hustled them along to another. To Katie’s relief, it was a trio of
     old women and a younger one with a baby that got in, ranging themselves along the
     bench. They proceeded to talk among themselves, a conversation that sounded as if
     it had been resumed from one begun as they had waited, all about pregnancies and births
     and weddings. With them sitting bulwark between her and any strange men, Katie allowed
     herself to relax.
    Stop after stop punctuated the morning. Katie discovered by dint of listening and
     careful observation that the door in the middle of the blank wall led to a lavatory,
     and she was glad to make use of it, finding it a far cry from the primitive privies
     set up at the circus. It seemed the height of luxury to her; she recognized how to
     use it from reading magazine advertisements for such things. She wondered what it
     would be like to have such a little room right in your own home, with, perhaps, a
     bathtub that wasn’t made of canvas and didn’t have to be set up outdoors! She was
     tempted to linger, running her hand along the cool, clean, white porcelain of the
     wash basin, admiring how water came from the tap . . . but there might be someone
     out there waiting, and she didn’t want to draw attention to herself.
    She did thrill in washing her hands and face not just once, but twice, before she
     left.
    As the hour neared noon, each time the train stopped, she