MISS BARRINGTON COMES HOME The long train was slackening speed and two whistles rang shrilly through the roar of wheels when Miss Barrington laid down the book with which she had beguiled her journey of fifteen hundred miles, and rose from her seat in a corner of the big first-class car.

The car was sumptuously upholstered and its decorations tasteful as well as lavish, but just then it held no other passenger, and Miss Barrington smiled curiously as she stood, swaying a little, in front of the mirror at one end of it, wrapping her furs about her.

There was, however, a faint suggestion of regret in the smile, and the girl's eyes grew grave again, for the soft cushions, dainty curtains, gleaming gold and nickel, and equable temperature formed a part of the sheltered life she was about to leave behind her, and there would, she knew, be a difference in the future.

Still, she laughed again, as, drawing the little fur cap well down upon her broad white forehead, she nodded at her own reflection.
"One cannot have everything, and you might have stayed there and reveled in civilization if you had liked," she said.
Crossing to the door of the portico she stood a moment with fingers on its handle, and once more looked about her.

The car was very cosy, and Maud Barrington had all the average young woman's appreciation of the smoother side of life, although she had also the capacity, which is by no means so common, for extracting the most it had to give from the opposite one.