You'll see!"
Her father realized that there were several things a young girl
could do to punish her parents. Kedzie frightened hers with her
fanatic zeal. They gave in at last from sheer terror. Immediately
she became almost intolerably rapturous. She shrieked and jumped;
and she kissed and hugged every member of the household, including
the dogs and the cats. She must go down-town and torment her girl
friends with her superiority and she could hardly live through
the hours that intervened before the train started.
The Thropps rode all day in the day-coach to Chicago, and Kedzie
loved every cinder that flew into her gorgeous eyes. Now and then
she slept curled up kittenwise on a seat, and the motion of the train
lulled her as with angelic pinions. She dreamed impossible glories
in unheard-of cities.
But her mother bulked large and had been too long accustomed to
her own rocking-chair to rest in a day-coach. She reached Chicago
in a state of collapse. She told Adna that she would have to travel
the rest of the way in a sleeper or in a baggage-car, for she just
naturally had to lay down. So Adna paid for two berths. It weakened
him like a hemorrhage.
Kedzie's first sorrow was in leaving Chicago. They changed trains
there, bouncing across the town in a bus. That transit colored
Kedzie's soul like dragging a ribbon through a vat of dye. Henceforth
she was of a city hue.
She was enamoured of every cobblestone, and she loved every man,
woman, horse, and motor she passed.
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