pockets, lowered his head, and darted up
the street against the north wind. He was a tall boy of fifteen,
slight and narrow-chested. When he came back with the spikes,
Alexandra asked him what he had done with his overcoat.

"I left it in the drug store. I couldn't climb in it, anyhow.
Catch me if I fall, Emil," he called back as he began his ascent.
Alexandra watched him anxiously; the cold was bitter enough on the
ground. The kitten would not budge an inch. Carl had to go to
the very top of the pole, and then had some difficulty in tearing
her from her hold. When he reached the ground, he handed the cat
to her tearful little master. "Now go into the store with her,
Emil, and get warm." He opened the door for the child. "Wait a
minute, Alexandra. Why can't I drive for you as far as our place?
It's getting colder every minute. Have you seen the doctor?"

"Yes. He is coming over to-morrow. But he says father can't
get better; can't get well." The girl's lip trembled. She looked
fixedly up the bleak street as if she were gathering her strength
to face something, as if she were trying with all her might to
grasp a situation which, no matter how painful, must be met and
dealt with somehow. The wind flapped the skirts of her heavy coat
about her.

Carl did not say anything, but she felt his sympathy. He, too, was
lonely. He was a thin, frail boy, with brooding dark eyes, very
quiet in all his movements. There was a delicate pallor in his thin
face, and his mouth was too sensitive for a boy's. The lips had
already a little curl of bitterness and skepticism. The two friends
stood for a few moments on the windy street corner, not speaking
a word, as two travelers, who have lost their way, sometimes stand
and admit their perplexity in silence. When Carl turned away he
said, "I'll see to your team." Alexandra went into the store to
have her purchases packed in the egg-boxes, and to get warm before
she set out on her long cold drive.

When she looked for Emil, she found him sitting on a step of the
staircase that led up to the clothing and carpet department. He
was playing with a little Bohemian girl, Marie Tovesky, who was
tying her handkerchief over the kitten's head for a bonnet. Marie
was a stranger in the country, having come from Omaha with her mother
to visit her uncle, Joe Tovesky. She was a dark child, with brown
curly hair, like a brunette doll's, a coaxing little red mouth, and
round, yellow-brown eyes. Every one