If she could have one
more breath of mountain air!
The day had been too full of wonders. Impressions had crowded on
her sensitive brain so thick and fast that the recollection of
them was as through a haze. She had never been on a train before
and when, as it crashed ahead, she clutched Hale's arm in fear and
asked how they stopped it, Hale hearing the whistle blow for a
station, said:
"I'll show you," and he waved one hand out the window. And he
repeated this trick twice before she saw that it was a joke. All
day he had soothed her uneasiness in some such way and all day he
watched her with an amused smile that was puzzling to her. She
remembered sadly watching the mountains dwindle and disappear, and
when several of her own people who were on the train were left at
way-stations, it seemed as though all links that bound her to her
home were broken. The face of the country changed, the people
changed in looks, manners and dress, and she shrank closer to Hale
with an increasing sense of painful loneliness. These level fields
and these farm-houses so strangely built, so varied in colour were
the "settlemints," and these people so nicely dressed, so clean
and fresh-looking were "furriners.
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