The Magic Nuts

The way was long. Lay of the Last Minstrel. Little Leonore pressed her face against the window of the railway carriage and tried hard to see out. But it was no use. It all looked so dark and black, all the darker and blacker for the glimmer of the rain-drops trickling down thickly outside, and reflecting the feeble light of the lamp in the roof of the compartment. Leonore sighed deeply. She was very tired, more tired than she knew, for she did not feel sleepy, or as if she would give anything to be undressed and go to bed. On the contrary, she wished with all her heart that it was daylight, and that it would leave off raining, and that she could get out of the stuffy old railway train, and go for a good run. It had been raining for so long, and they had been such a lot of hours shut in and bum-bumming along in this dreary way—it even seemed to her now and then as if she had always been sitting in her corner like this, and that it had always been night and always raining outside. 'I don't believe I'm going to be happy at all at Alten,' she said to herself. 'I'm sure it's going to be horrid. It's always the way if people tell you anything's going to be lovely and nice, it's sure to be dull, and—just horrid.'