Pretty soon after starting came their first dinner on the car.  Such a nice one!—­soup, roast chicken and lamb, green peas, new potatoes, stewed tomato; all as hot and as perfectly served as if they had been “on dry land,” as Amy phrased it.  There was fresh curly lettuce too, with mayonnaise dressing, and a dessert of strawberries and ice-cream,—­the latter made and frozen on the car, whose resources seemed inexhaustible.  The cook had been attached to Car Forty-seven for some years, and had a celebrity on his own road for the preparation of certain dishes, which no one else could do as well, however many markets and refrigerators and kitchen ranges might be at command.  One of these dishes was a peculiar form of cracked wheat, made crisp and savory after some mysterious fashion, and eaten with thick cream.  Like most chefs, the cook liked to do the things in which he excelled, and finding that it was admired, he gave the party this delicious wheat every morning.

“The car seems paved with bottles of Apollinaris and with lemons,” wrote Katy to her father.  “There seems no limit to the supply.  Just as surely as it grows warm and dusty, and we begin to remember that we are thirsty, a tinkle is heard, and Bayard appears with a tray,—­iced lemonade, if you please, made with Apollinaris water with strawberries floating on top!  What do you think of that at thirty miles an hour?  Bayard is the colored butler.  The cook is named Roland.  We have a fine flavor of peers and paladins among us, you perceive.

“The first day out was cool and delicious, and we had no dust.  At six o’clock we stopped at a junction, and our car was detached and run off on a siding.  This was because Mr. Dayton had business in the place, and we were to wait and be taken on by the next express train soon after midnight.  At first they ran us down to a pretty place by the side of the river, where it was cool, and we could look out on the water and a green bank opposite, and we thought we were going to have such a nice night; but the authorities changed their minds, and presently to our deep disgust a locomotive came puffing down the road, clawed us up, ran us back, and finally left us in the middle of innumerable tracks and switches just where all the freight trains came in and met.  All night long they were arriving and going out.  Cars loaded with cattle, cars loaded with sheep, with pigs!  Such bleatings and mooings and gruntings, I never heard in all my life before.  I could think of nothing but that verse in the Psalms, ‘Strong bulls of Bashan have beset me round,’ and could only hope that the poor animals did not feel half as badly as they sounded.

“Then long before light, as we lay listening to these lamentable roarings and grunts, and quite unable to sleep for heat and noise, came the blessed express, and presently we were away out of all the din, with the fresh air of the prairie blowing in; and in no time at all we were