Her utmost dream of happiness had been realized. She was to go to the
land of the red-headed stranger where she would be admired and courted,
and where, in time, she might aspire to the ultimate honor of having her
picture in a ten-cent magazine.
X
ON THE WING
The train rolled away from the low and dingy station and was in the open
country of Morovenia. Kalora and her elderly guardian and the young
women who were to be her companions during the period of exile had been
tucked away into adjoining compartments. Each young woman was muffled
and veiled according to the most discreet and orthodox rules.
Popova's bright red fez contrasted strangely with his silvering hair,
but no more strangely than did this wondrous experience of starting for
a new world contrast with the quiet years that he had spent among his
books.
The train sped into the farm-lands. On either side was a wide stretch
of harvest fields, heaving into gentle billows, with here and there a
shabby cluster of buildings. If Kalora had only known, Morovenia was
very much like the far-away America, except that Morovenia had not
learned to decorate the hillsides with billboards.
At last she was to have a taste of freedom! No father to scold and
plead; no much-superior sister to torment her with reproaches; no
peering through grated windows at one little rectangle of outside
sunshine.
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