To Kedzie Thropp the waiting-room of the Grand Central Terminal was the terminus of human splendor. It was the waiting-room to heaven. And indeed it is a majestic chamber.
The girl walked with her face high, staring at the loftily columned recesses with the bay-trees set between the huge square pillars, and above all the feigned blue sky and the monsters of the zodiac in powdered gold.
Kedzie could hardly breathe—it was so beautiful, so much superior to the plain every-night sky she was used to, with stars of tin instead of gold like these.
Even her mother said “Well!” and Adna paid the architects the tribute of an exclamation: “Humph! So this is the new station we was readin' about. Some bigger'n ours at home, eh, Kedzie?”
But Kedzie was not there. They had lost her and had to turn back. She was in a trance. When they snatched her down to earth again and pulled her through the crowds she began to adore the people. They were dressed in unbelievable splendor—millions, she guessed, in far better than the best Sunday best she had ever seen. She wondered if she would ever have nice clothes. She vowed that she would if she had to murder somebody to get them.
The porter led the way from the vastitude of a corridor under the street and through vast empty rooms and up a stairway and down a few steps and through the first squirrel-cage door Kedzie had ever seen (she had to run round it thrice before they could get her out) into a sumptuousness beyond her dream.
At the foot of more stairs the porter let down his burdens, and a boy in a general's uniform seized them. The porter said, mopping his brow to emphasize his achievement:
“This is fur's I go.”
“Oh, all right! Much obliged,” said Adna. He just pretended to walk away as a joke on the porter. When he saw the man's white stare aggravated sufficiently, Adna smiled and handed him a dime.
The porter stared and turned away in bitter grief. Then his chuckle returned as he went his way, telling himself: “And the bes' of it was, I fit for him! I just had to git that man.”