"You have never been away from home, you have never seen a city?"
"What is a city?"
"Oh, it's a place, a horrible place where it's all smoke, and houses, and noise."
Geraldine shook her head. She could not imagine what such a place as this could be like.
"Are there many more people in the world from where you come?" asked Geraldine after a pause, resting her chin on her hand and gazing at me with a deep, far-away look, as if she recognised me dimly but was not quite sure.
"Oh, yes; but has your father never told you about the world and the people in it?"
"No," said Geraldine, with a shake of the head; "he told me it was a bad place, and I must never go there, that was all."
"Have you never wished to go there?"
"No, never, till—till now."
"Why now?"