"I should think you'd want to go back there, Zara. It must have been beautiful."
"Oh, I've always wanted to see that place, Bessie. Sometimes, my father says, the mountain, would smoke, and fire would come out of it, and the ground would shake. But it never hurt the place where we lived."
"That must have been a volcano, Zara."
"Yes, that's what he used to call it."
"Why did you come over here?"
"Because my father was always afraid over there. There were some bad men who hated him, and he said that if he stayed there they would hurt him. And he heard that over here everyone was welcome, and one man was as good as another. But he wasn't, or they never seemed to think so, if he was."
Bessie looked very thoughtful.
"This is the finest country in the world, Zara," she said. "I've heard that, and I've read it in books, too. But I guess that things go wrong here sometimes. You see, it's this way. Just think of Jake Hoover."
"But I don't want to think about him! I want to forget him!"
"Well, Jake Hoover explains what I'm thinking about. He's an American, but that isn't the reason he was so mean to us. He'd be mean anywhere, no matter whether he was an American or what. He just can't help it. And I think he'll get over it, anyhow."