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"Didn't you get a letter explaining everything?"  The stewardess looked at her questioningly.

"There was a letter," Saylie admitted, "but I never got to see it.  I don't think it was addressed to me, because my parents had opened it and read it by the time I got home from school.  It had my train tickets in it, but I wasn't given those until we got to the station, and there were some checklists of things that I had to do and pack, so I got given those to do, but I didn't see the letter itself.  My parents told me what it was about."  Saylie sighed.   What she didn't tell the stewardess was how her mother had discussed her annoyance and shame at having a child exiled for hours at a time.

The afternoon didn't drag on, but Saylie did pull out a puzzle book and some pens so she had something to do aside from gazing out the window.  The sun was getting lower in the west and the shadow of the train was making the details of the near fields more difficult to see.  There was more pasture in among the crop now too and Saylie noted that there were separate herds of black or white cows in some of those pastures.  Darkness came as the train was pulling into Morphelstone and she realised that she couldn't see the colour of the buildings.