HEART OF THE CITY
and the Woodland Girl quickened to the brighten- ing with almost melodramatic delight, for all pre- vious conversational overtures from this neighbor had been about actors that she had never heard of, or operas that she could not even pronounce, and before the man's scrutinizing, puzzled amazement she had felt convicted not alone of mere rural ig- norance, but of freckles on her nose.
"What brought me to New York?" she re- peated with vehement new courage. "Do you really want to know ? It's quite a speech. What brought me to New York? Why, I wanted to see the heart of the city. I'm twenty years old, and I've never in all my life been away from home be fore. Always and always I've lived in a log bung- alow, in a wild garden, in a pine forest, on a green island, in a blue lake. My father is an invalid, you know, one of those people who are a little bit short of lungs but inordinately long of brains. And I know Anglo-Saxon and Chemistry and Hin- doo History and Sunrises and Sunsets and Moun- tains and Moose, and such things. But I wanted to know People. I wanted to know Romance. I wanted to see for myself all this 'heart of the city' that you hear so much about the great, blood-red, eager, gasping heart of the city. So I came down here last week to visit my uncle and
aunt."
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