stery, whose
manner was altogether discouraging to curiosity.

Those of us who have never experienced hardships, never plumbed the
black depths of trouble, never suffered desperate anguish, are too
prone to belittle the suffering of others. Mrs. Singleton Corey had
always secretly believed that suffering meant merely a certain
bearable degree of discomfort. In exalted moments she had contemplated
simple living as a desirable thing, good to purge one's soul of
trivialities. Life in the raw was picturesque.

She changed her mind with a suddenness that was painful when she
tottered thankfully into Toll-Gate cabin and found the main room
unswept and with the breakfast dishes cold and cluttered upon the
rough, homemade table. And Kate crying on a couch in the other room,
close enough to the heating stove so that she could keep the fire up
without putting her injured foot to the floor. She did not know this
disheveled woman with swollen eyes and a soiled breakfast cap and an
ugly bathrobe and one foot bandaged like a caricature of a gouty
member of plutocracy. The Kate Humphrey she hazily remembered had been
a careful product of refinement, attired in a black lace evening gown
and wearing very good imitation pearls.

But Mrs. Singleton Corey gave no more than one glance at Kate, who
hurriedly pulled her bathrobe together and made a half-hearted attempt
to rise and greet her properly. The stove looked like a glimpse of
paradise, and Mrs. Singleton Corey pulled up a straight-backed chair
and sat down with a groan of thankfulness, pulling her snow-sodden
skirts up above her shoetops to let a little warmth reach her
patrician limbs. She fumbled at the buttons of her coat and threw it
open, laid a palm eloquently upon her aching side and groaned again.

But the dauntless Mrs. Singleton Corey could not for long permit her
spirit to be subdued, especially since she had not yet found Jack.

"Well, can you get word to my son that I am here and should like to
see him?" she asked, as soon as the chill had left her a little. "This
is a terrible storm," she added politely.

Even when Kate had explained how impossible it was to get word to any
one just then, Mrs. Singleton Corey refused to yield one bit of her
composure to the anxiety that filled her. She simply sat and looked at
poor Kate like the chairman of a ways-and-means committee who is
waiting to hear all the reports.

"You think, then, that the young woman went to meet Jac