"O, dear!" she sighed. "I don't like to have it so big. Do people live all along the whole way?"
"Yes, the whole way, and lots of big cities."
"Big as Madison?" Madison was her unseen measure of greatness.
"O, yes. A hundred times bigger."
She sighed again and looked away to the east with a strange, unchildish, set stare in her eyes. She was trying to realize it.
"It makes me ache, pappa," she sighed, putting her little brown hand to her throat.
When the engine came in with its thunder and whizz, she shrank back against the station wall, white and breathless, not so much with fear as with awe. She had never stood so close to this monster before. It attracted all her attention so that for the moment she forgot about the coming of her aunt.
When she looked into the large dull face of Mrs. Diehl she was deeply disappointed. She liked her but she not love her!
She had looked forward to her coming almost as if to the return of her mother. She had imagined her looking strange and beautiful because she came out of the mystical, far-off land her father often spoke of. Instead of these things Mrs. Diehl was a strong-featured, mild-voiced woman, rather large and ungraceful, who looked upon the motherless child and clicked her tongue—tch!
"You poor chick!"