uscript when I met Beppo and Ben with the sled, bound for a certain
slope which they credited with famous tobogganing virtues. They greeted
me as if I were one of them; seriously they turned their faces up to
mine as they expounded their plans. I was aware of an inward fluttering
of pride, for it is no small matter to win the confidence of small
children. I went with them towards the hill they spoke of. It lay at the
end of an avenue of superb trees whose black, leafless twigs bore their
frosting of snow like strings of jewels in the glittering air. The wind
blew up the avenue keenly in our faces as we trudged. And then, where
the trees ended, the hill fell away at our feet, the valley lay far and
wide, the steel-blue river winding below, and in the distance the domes
and towers of the Metropolis.

"Look!" I said, stooping down to them and pointing. "Do you know what
that is?" They nodded and looked at me smiling. "N'York," they
whispered.

"When is father coming home?" I asked.

"Soon," said Beppo. "Ma was cryin' this morning."

"Why," I said in astonishment. "And does she cry when he comes home?"

"Oh, no," he replied slowly. "She cheers up when he comes home. It's the
storm, I guess. When the wind blows she cries a good bit."

And the next moment they were flying, face forward, down the hill.

I was roused from the study into which this plunged me by Miss
Fraenkel's interest in the catastrophe. As I bought my stamps and posted
my letters she continued to discuss its possibilities.

"What a story it would make!" she observed. "A thing like that coming
down here, of all places, and nobody expecting it. Like Sherlock
Holmes."

"Very," I said. "I must try my hand at it some day."

"And of course," she went on, "you'll have to fix up a love interest.
You remember you told me it was absolutely necessary to have one."

"Yes, I'll try that too," I assured her. "And the post-mistress as well.
All the best stories have one."

"Don't you dare," she called after me, laughing.

My friend was busy at his easel, blocking out a poster for a
breakfast-food.

"Where's Bill?" I asked. With a movement of his head as he reached for
his matches, he indicated next door.

Presently she returned, rather pale and at first reluctant to say very
much. It came out slowly as she arranged it in her mind.

"She has seen him," she said. "And he wrote to her. It put notions in
her head. But she can't explain--in English, you know.