traveling companion, a nervous country merchant on his way to New York to buy goods.  He hurried her through the crowd and the noise into the dining-saloon; stood by her side while, obedient to his orders, she poured down her throat a cup of almost boiling coffee; then, seating her in the ladies’ room charged her on no account to stir from that point while he was gone—­he had just time to run around to the post-office, and mail a forgotten letter; then he vanished, and in the confusion and the crowd Ester was alone.  She did not feel, in the least, flurried or nervous; on the contrary, she liked it, this first experience of hers in a city depot; she would not have had it made known to one of the groups of fashionably-attired and very-much-at-ease travelers who thronged past her for the world—­but the truth was, Ester had been having her very first ride in the cars!  Sadie had made various little trips in company with school friends to adjoining towns, after school books, or music, or to attend a concert, or for pure fun; but, though Ester had spent her eighteen years of life in a town which had long been an “Express Station,” yet want of time, or of money, or of inclination to take the bits of journeys which alone were within her reach, had kept her at home.  Now she glanced at herself, at her faultlessly neat and ladylike traveling suit.  She could get a full view of it in an opposite mirror, and it was becoming, from the dainty vail which fluttered over her hat, to the shining tip of her walking boots; and she gave a complacent little sigh, as she said to herself:  “I don’t see but I look as much like a traveler as any of them.  I’m sure I don’t feel in the least confused.  I’m glad I’m not as ridiculously dressed as that pert-looking girl in brown.  I should call it in very bad taste to wear such a rich silk as that for traveling.  She doesn’t look as though she had a single idea beyond dress; probably that is what is occupying her thoughts at this very moment;” and Ester’s speaking face betrayed contempt and conscious superiority, as she watched the fluttering bit of silk and ribbons opposite.  Ester had a very mistaken opinion of herself in this respect; probably she would have been startled and indignant had any one told her that her supposed contempt for the rich and elegant attire displayed all around her, was really the outgrowth of envy; that, when she told herself she wouldn’t lavish so much time and thought, and, above all, money, on mere outside show, it was mere nonsense—­that she already spent all the time at her disposal, and all the money she could possibly spare, on the very things which she was condemning.

The truth was, Ester had a perfectly royal taste in all these matters.  Give her but the wherewithal, and she would speedily have glistened in silk, and sparkled with jewels; yet she honestly thought that her bitter denunciation of fashion and folly in this form was outward evidence of a mind elevated far above such trivial subjects, and looked down, accordingly, with cool contempt on those whom she was pleased to denominate “butterflies of fashion.”