“I don’t know exactly,—­perhaps two hours.”

“Two whole hours in the cars!” exclaimed Ida.  “How much I shall have to tell father and Jack when I get back.”

“So you will,” said Mrs. Hardwick, with an unaccountable smile, “when you get back.”

There was something peculiar in her tone as she pronounced these last words, but Ida did not notice it.

So Ida, despite her company, actually enjoyed, in her bright anticipation, a keen sense of pleasure.

“Are we most there?” she asked, after riding about two hours.

“It won’t be long,” said the nurse.

“We must have come ever so many miles,” said Ida.

An hour passed.  She amused herself by gazing out of the car windows at the towns which seemed to flit by.  At length, both Ida and her nurse became hungry.

The nurse beckoned to her side a boy who was going through the cars selling apples and seed-cakes, and inquired their price.

“The apples are two cents apiece, ma’am, and the cakes a cent apiece.”

Ida, who had been looking out of the window, turned suddenly round, and exclaimed, in great astonishment; “Why, William Fitts, is that you?”

“Why, Ida, where did you come from?” asked the boy, his surprise equalling her own.

The nurse bit her lips in vexation at this unexpected recognition.

“I’m making a little journey with her,” indicating Mrs. Hardwick.

“So you’re going to Philadelphia,” said the boy.

“To Philadelphia!” said Ida, in surprise.  “Not that I know of.”

“Why, you’re most there now.”

“Are we, Mrs. Hardwick?” asked Ida, looking in her companion’s face.

“It isn’t far from there where we’re going,” said the nurse, shortly.  “Boy, I’ll take two of your apples and four seed-cakes.  And now you’d better go along, for there’s somebody by the stove that looks as if he wanted to buy of you.”

William looked back as if he would like to question Ida farther, but her companion looked forbidding, and he passed on reluctantly.

“Who is that boy?” asked the nurse, abruptly.

“His name is William Fitts.”

“Where did you get acquainted with him?”

“He went to school with Jack, so I used to see him sometimes.”

“With Jack!  Who’s Jack?”

“What!  Don’t you know Jack, brother Jack?” asked Ida, in childish surprise.

“O yes,” replied the nurse, recollecting herself; “I didn’t think of him.”

He’s a first-rate boy, William is,” said Ida, who was disposed to be communicative.  “He’s good to his mother.  You see his mother is sick most of the time, and can’t do much; and he’s got a little sister, she ain’t more than four or five years old—­and William supports them by selling things.  “He’s only sixteen; isn’t he a smart boy?”

“Yes;” said the nurse, mechanically.

“Some time,” continued Ida, “I hope I shall be able to earn something for father and mother, so they won’t be obliged to work so hard.”