“Well...” Mr. Lane said.
They stood, all three, looking at one another, not knowing what to say. Then Peggy’s mother, with more than a faint suspicion of tears in her eyes, threw her arms about her daughter and kissed her.
“Oh dear!” she said. “You’d better get on that plane right away, or I am going to be silly and cry!”
Peggy kissed both her parents and started through the gate across the concrete strip where the big plane waited. As she turned to wave good-by, her mother called, “Are you sure you have—”
“Yes!” Peggy shouted back. “I’m sure!”
“And don’t forget to phone the minute you get there!” her father called, his last words drowned out by the sound of a plane that swooped low overhead.
At the top of the boarding steps, Peggy waved again for the last time, then went in to her seat to start her first flight alone—a flight that would bring her to all she had ever hoped for.
It was dark when the plane arrived in New York this time, and if Peggy had thought the sight breathtaking when she first saw it, she was absolutely stunned by this!
In every direction, as far as she could see, the streets stretched out like blazing strings of lights, white, red, blue, green, with sudden bursts and knots of brighter light where major streets joined. As the plane banked and turned, she saw a superhighway winding along the edge of a bay, interrupted by complicated cloverleafs, underpasses and overpasses. The lights on the highway were diamond-blue, and the road was dotted with headlights and taillights of thousands of cars like fireflies in the night.
Then the turning of the plane revealed midtown Manhattan, tall and sparkling! The Empire State Building towered over all, its four bright beams sweeping the sky over the city. The UN building stood out like a solid slab of brilliance against the rest of the skyline. Beyond it, Times Square blazed like a bonfire.