For a dizzy moment the girl stared at him, then, though her flushed
cheeks had whitened pitifully and her lip trembled, she answered with
bravely lifted head.
"I thank you very much for all the help you've been to me, Mr. Stoddard.
What I said just now didn't look as though I appreciated it. I ask your
pardon for that. I aim to do the best I can for the children. And
I--thank you."
She turned and was gone, leaving him puzzled and with a sore ache at
heart.
Winter came on, wet, dark, cheerless, in the shackling, half-built
little village, and Johnnie saw for the first time what the distress of
the poor in cities is. A temperature which would have been agreeable in
a drier climate, bit to the bone in the mist-haunted valleys of that
mountain region. The houses were mostly mere board shanties, tightened
by pasting newspapers over the cracks inside, where the women of the
family had time for such work; and the heating apparatus was generally a
wood-burning cook-stove, with possibly an additional coal heater in the
front room which could be fired on Sundays, or when the family was at
home to tend it.
All through the bright autumn days, Laurella Himes had hurried from one
new and charming sensation or discovery to another; she was like the
butterflies that haunt the banks of little streams or wayside pools at
this season, disporting themselves more gaily even than the insects of
spring in what must be at best a briefer glory.
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