"It's nothing but hardships and danger."
"California's at the end of it, dearie, and they say that's the most
beautiful country in the world."
"It will be a strange country," she said wistfully, not thinking alone
of California.
"Not for long."
"Do you think we'll ever feel at home in it?"
The question came in a faint voice. Why did California, once the goal
of her dreams, now seem an alien land in which she always would be a
stranger?
"We're bringing our home with us--carrying some of it on our backs like
snails and the rest in our hearts like all pioneers. Soon it will
cease being strange, when there are children in it. Where there's a
camp fire and a blanket and a child, that's home, Missy."
He leaned toward her and laid his hand on hers as it rested on the
pommel.
"You'll be so happy in it," he said softly.
A sudden surge of feeling, more poignant than anything she had yet
felt, sent a pricking of tears to her eyes. She turned her face away,
longing in sudden misery for some one to whom she could speak plainly,
some one who once had felt as she did now. For the first time she
wished that there was another woman in the train.
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