The idea of so many hours in the train had been delightful to all the young ones; none of them but Judy had been a greater distance than forty or fifty miles before, and it seemed perfectly fascinating to think of rushing on and on through the blackness as well as the daylight.
But long before ten o'clock a change came o'er the spirit of their dreams.

Nell and Baby had had a quarrel over the puffing out of the air-cushions, and were too tired and cross to make it up again; Pip had hit Bunty over the head for no ostensible reason, and received two kicks in return; Judy's head ached, and the noise, was not calculated to cure it; Meg had grown weary of staring out into the moving darkness, and wondering whether Alan would notice she was never on the river-boat now; and the poor little General was filling the hot air with expostulations, in the shape of loud roars, at the irregularities of the treatment he was undergoing.
Esther had taken his day clothes off, and made a picture of him in a cream flannel nightgown and a pink wool jacket.

And for half an hour, he had submitted good-temperedly to being handed about and tickled and half-smothered with kisses.

He had eyen permitted Nell to bite his little pink toes severally, and say a surprising amount of nonsense about little pigs that went to market and did similarly absurd things.
He had hardly remonstrated when there had been a dispute about the possession of his person, and Bunty had clung to his head and body while Nell pulled vigorously at his legs.
But after a time, when Esther made him a little bed on one of the seats and tried to lay him down upon it, a sense of his grievances came over him.
He had a swinging cot at home; with little gold bars at the foot to blink at--he could not see why he should be mulcted of it, and made to put up with a rug three times doubled.

He was accustomed, too, to a shaded light, a quiet room, and a warning H'sh! h'sh! whenever people forgot themselves sufficiently to make the slightest noise.
Here the great yellow light flared all the time, and every one of the noisy creatures at whose hands he endured so much was within a few feet of him.
So he lifted up his voice and wept.