“Well, if you don’t like my company—­” Laura began good-naturedly, as she squinted at her distorted reflection in the little two-by-four mirror set in the tiny space of wall between the windows.  “Gracious, Billie, you took it off of one eye to put it over the other.  Do I look more like a perfect lady with my hat over my right eye?”

Billie chuckled and pushed the hat over Laura’s nose, at which Laura would have protested vigorously and, if must be, forcefully, if there had not been other passengers in the train besides themselves.  As it was, she had to be content with an indignant stare, which Billie, with twinkling eyes, calmly turned her back upon.

“Roland!  Roland!” called the conductor in stentorian tones, and with little squeals of excitement the girls found their hand baggage, gave one last little pat to their hats, and started toward the door.

“You go first, Mrs. Gilligan,” cried Violet, pushing that woman before her.

“I wonder if Vi expects the ghosts to meet us at the station?” chuckled Laura in Billie’s ear.  “She reminds me of a relative of ours who always pushes her escort in front of her when she meets a strange dog.”

Billie giggled, caught her grip on the arm of one of the seats, rescued it again, and finally made her way with the others to the platform.

It was a rather old and broken-down platform, just as Roland proved to be a rather old and broken-down place, and the girls stood on it ruefully as they watched the train rumble off in the distance.

“Now we’re in for it,” said Billie, her eyes taking in a disconsolate-looking store or two and a drooping post-office.  “I wonder if this is what they call the village?”

“Well, we’re not going to live here,” said Mrs. Gilligan briskly.  “And you can’t expect to find a thriving town away off a hundred miles from nowhere.  Come on, let’s see if we can find some sort of a wagon to take us and our belongings to Cherry Corners.  I don’t suppose,” she added, as they crossed the street toward a building a little more dilapidated than the rest that had the words Livery Stable painted on a blurred sign over the door, “that there is any sort of hotel or boarding house where we might put up for the night.”

“Mother didn’t remember about that.  You see she had been here only once,” said Billie.  “But I don’t imagine there is—­any place that we would want to stay at,” she added, making a wry little face.

The place, in truth, was not attractive, nor did it promise much, outwardly at least, as a refuge for the night.  Besides the street on which were the forlorn looking stores and the post-office and a few other nondescript looking buildings that might have been used for almost any possible purpose, there seemed to be but two streets on which were built the dwelling houses.  These, for the most part, were simple and plain enough, each with its yard, well or ill kept, in front and a garden and chicken yard behind.  Only one was a little more pretentious in appearance, but that, too, had attached to it its garden and chicken yard.