It is a queer thought, not to say a startling one, what very trifles about us are constantly giving object lessons on our characters.  Those four girls, as they arranged themselves in the cars for their all-day journey conveyed four different impressions to the critical looker-on.  In the first place they each selected and took possession of an entire seat, though the cars were filling rapidly, and many an anxious woman and heavily laden man looked reproachfully at them.  They took these whole seats from entirely different stand-points—­Miss Erskine because she was a finished and selfish traveler; and although she did not belong to that absolutely unendurable class, who occupy room that is not theirs until a conductor interferes, she yet regularly appropriated and kept the extra seat engaged with her flounces until she was asked outright to vacate it by one more determined than the rest.  She hated company and avoided it when possible.  Flossy Shipley was willing, nay, ready, to give up her extra seat the moment a person of the right sort appeared; not simply a cleanly, respectable individual—­they might pass by the dozens—­but one who attracted her, who was elegantly dressed and stylish looking.  Flossy would endure being crowded if only the person who did it was stylish.  Miss Wilbur was indifferent to the whole race of human beings; she cared as little as possible whether a well-dressed lady stood or sat; so far as she was concerned they were apt to do the former.  She neither frowned nor smiled when the time came that she was obliged to move; she simply moved, with as unconcerned and indifferent a face as she had worn all the due.  As for Eurie Mitchell, she took an entire seat, as she did most other things, from pure heedlessness; any one was welcome who wanted to sit with her, and whether it was a servant girl or a princess was a matter of no moment.  These various shades of feeling were nearly as fully expressed in their faces as though they had spoken; and yet they did not in the least comprehend their own actions.  This is only an illustration; it was so in a hundred little nothings during the day.  Not a window was raised or closed for their benefit, not a turn of a blind made, that a close student of human nature could not have seen the distinct and ruling differences in their temperaments, no matter from what point of the compass they started.  In the course of time they reached East Buffalo.

“Now for our dinners!” Eurie said, as the whistle shrieked a warning that the station was being neared.  “What are we going to do?”

“We are going to eat them, I presume, as usual,” Miss Erskine said in her most indifferent tone.  I should explain that long before this the girls had grown weary of the separate seats, and by dint of much planning and the good-natured removal of two fellow passengers to other seats had accomplished an arrangement that should naturally have been enjoyed from the beginning:  that of a turned seat, and being their own seat-mates.