Carolyn of the Corners

CHAPTER XII—CHET GORMLEY TELLS SOME NEWS

“My hands be, Car’lyn May,” said the carpenter in his dry voice.

“Oh!”

“But I kin listen to ye—and I kin talk.”

“Oh, that’s nice! You can talk when you are sawing and fitting things, can’t you? Not like when you are nailing. Then your mouth’s full of nails—like Mrs. Gormley’s is full of pins when she’s fitting you.”

“Miz Gormley never fitted me to nothin’ yet,” returned Mr. Parlow grimly, “less ’twas a suit of gossip.”

Carolyn May did not notice this remark, nor would she have understood it. She thought Chet Gormley’s mother a very interesting woman, indeed. She always knew so much about everybody.

Just now, moreover, Carolyn May had something else in her mind; so she ignored Mr. Parlow’s remark about the seamstress. She asked in a half-whisper:

“Mr. Parlow, did you hear about what happened yesterday?”

“Eh?” he queried, eyeing her quizzically. “Does anything ever happen on Sunday?”

“Something did on this Sunday,” cried the little girl. “Didn’t you hear about the snake?”

“What d’ye mean—snake? The old original snake—that sarpint ye read about in the Scriptures?” demanded the carpenter, ruffling up his grey hair till it looked like the topknot of a very cross cockatoo.

“Oh, no, Mr. Parlow!” and then little Carolyn May explained. She told the story with such earnestness that he stopped working to listen, watching her with as shrewd, sharp eyes as ever a real cockatoo possessed.

“Humph!” was his grunted comment at the end. “Well!”

“Don’t you think that was real exciting?” asked Carolyn May. “And just see how it almost brought my Uncle Joe and your Miss Amanda together. Don’t you see?”

Mr. Parlow actually jumped. “What’s that you say, child?” he rasped out grimly. “Bring Mandy and Joe Stagg together? Well, I guess not!”

“Oh, Mr. Parlow, don’t you think that would be just be-a-you-ti-ful?” cried the little girl with a lingering emphasis upon the most important word. “Don’t you see how happy they would be?”

“I’d like to know who told you they’d be happy?” he demanded crossly.

“Why! wouldn’t they be? If they truly love each other and could get over being mad?”

“Humph!” growled Mr. Parlow, “you let their ‘mad’ alone. ’Tain’t none of your business.” Mr. Parlow was really all ruffled up, just as though he were angry at Carolyn May’s suggestion. “I don’t know as anybody’s pertic’lar anxious to see that daughter of mine and Joe Stagg friendly again. No good would come of it.”

Carolyn May looked at him sorrowfully. Mr. Parlow had quite disappointed her. It was plain to be seen that he was not the right one to advise with about the matter. The little girl sighed.

“I really did s’pose you’d want to see Miss Amanda happy, Mr. Parlow,” she whispered.

“Happy? Bah!” snarled the old man, setting vigorously to work again. He acted as if he wished to say no more, and let the little girl depart without another word.

Carolyn May really could not understand it—at least, she could not immediately. It seemed the most natural thing in the world for Mr. Parlow to wish to see his daughter happy and content.

And the little girl knew that Miss Amanda was not happy. As she became better and better acquainted with the woman whom she thought so beautiful she was more and more convinced that the carpenter’s daughter was not of a cheerful spirit.

Mr. Jedidiah Parlow did not seem to care in the least. That must be, Carolyn May told herself, because he was under the influence of the Dark Spirit himself. He was always looking down. Like Mr. Stagg, the old carpenter was immersed in his daily tasks and seldom thought of anything else.

“Why, he doesn’t even know what it means to be happy!” thought Carolyn May. “He never looks up, or out, or away from his carpenter’s bench. Dear me! of course he isn’t interested in Uncle Joe and Miss Amanda’s being in love.”

That Mr. Parlow might have a selfish reason for desiring to keep his daughter and Joseph Stagg apart did not enter the little girl’s mind. She was too young to appreciate such a situation as that might suggest.

After that Sunday walk, however, Carolyn May was never so much afraid of her uncle as before. Why, he had even called Prince “good dog”! Truly, Mr. Joseph Stagg was being transformed—if slowly.

He could not deny to himself that, to a certain extent, he was enjoying the presence of his little niece at The Corners. If he only could decide just what to do with the personal property of his sister Hannah and her husband down in the New York apartment. Never in his life had he been so long deciding a question. He could not bring himself to the point of writing the lawyer either to sublet the furnished apartment or to sell the furniture in it. Nor could he decide to go down himself to sort over Hannah’s little treasures, put the remainder in an auction room, and close up the apartment.

He had really loved Hannah. He knew it now, did Joseph Stagg, every time he looked at the lovely little child who had come to live with him at The Corners. Why! just so had Hannah looked when she was a little thing. The same deep, violet eyes, and sunny hair, and laughing lips——

Mr. Stagg sometimes actually found a reflection of the cheerful figure of “Hannah’s Car’lyn” coming between him and the big ledger over which he spent so many of his waking hours.

Once he looked up from the ledger—it was on a Saturday morning—and really did see the bright figure of the little girl standing before him. It was no dream or fancy, for old Jimmy, the cat, suddenly shot to the topmost shelf, squalling with wild abandon. Prince was nosing along at Carolyn May’s side.

“Bless me!” croaked Mr. Stagg. “That dog of yours, Car’lyn May, will give Jimmy a conniption fit yet. What d’you want down here?”

Carolyn May told him. A man had come to the house to buy a cow, and Aunty Rose had sent the little girl down to tell Mr. Stagg to come home and “drive his own bargain.”

“Well, well,” said Mr. Stagg, locking the ledger in the safe, “I’ll hustle right out and tend to it. Don’t see why the man couldn’t have waited till noontime. Hey, you, Chet!”

Chet Gormley was not down in the cellar on this occasion. He appeared, wearing a much soiled apron, and with very black hands, having been sorting bolts.

“Here I am, Mr. Stagg,” said the boy cheerfully. “Mornin’, Car’lyn May. And how’s our friend?” and he ventured to pat Prince’s head, having become well acquainted with the dog by this time.

“Never mind that dog, Chet,” said Mr. Stagg. “You pay attention to me. Look out for the store. Don’t have any fooling. And——”

“Oh, uncle! may I stay, too? Me and Prince?” cried Carolyn May. “We’ll be good.”

“Pshaw! Yes, if you want to,” responded Mr. Stagg, hurrying away. He did not wish to be bothered with her just then. He desired to walk rapidly.

Chet went to wash his hands and remove the apron. If he was to act as clerk instead of chore boy, he certainly must “dress the part.” Besides, he did not want to be so dirty in Carolyn May’s presence. It seemed to Chet Gormley as though a boy must look his very best to be worthy of companionship with the radiant little vision that Mr. Stagg referred to as “Hannah’s Car’lyn.”

“My! your uncle’s changin’ more and more, ain’t he?” remarked Chet, the optimistic. “He does sometimes almost laugh, Car’lyn. I never see the beat of it!”

“Oh, is he?” cried the little child. “Is he looking up more? Do you think he is, Chet?”

“I positively do,” Chet assured her.

“And he hasn’t always got his nose in that old ledger?”

“Well—I wouldn’t say that he neglected business, no, ma’am,” said the boy honestly. “You see, we men have got to think of business mostly. But he sure is thinkin’ of some other things, too—ya-as, indeedy!”

“What things, Chet?” Carolyn May asked anxiously, hoping that Uncle Joe had shown some recovered interest in Miss Amanda and that Chet had noticed it.

“Why—well—Now, you see, there’s that house you used to live in. You know about that?”

“What about it, Chet?” the little girl asked rather timidly. “Do you mean where I lived with my mamma and papa before they—they went away?”

“Yes. That’s the place.”

“It was an apartment,” explained Carolyn May.

“Yep. Well, Mr. Stagg ain’t never done nothin’ about it. He ain’t sold it, nor sold the furniture, nor nothin’. You know, Car’lyn May, your folks didn’t leave you no money.”

“Oh! Didn’t they?” cried Carolyn May, greatly startled.

“No. You see, I heard all about it. Mr. Vickers, the lawyer, came in here one day, and your uncle read a letter to him out loud. I couldn’t help but hear. The letter was from another lawyer and ’twas all about you and your concerns. I heard it all,” said the quite innocent Chet. He had never been taught that it was wrong to listen to other people’s private matters and to repeat them.

Carolyn May’s lips expressed a round “O” of wonder and surprise. Like his mother, Chet Gormley did not have to be urged when he was telling a bit of news. He was too deeply interested in it himself.

“And Mr. Vickers says: ‘So the child hasn’t anything of her own, Joe?’” Chet went on. “And your uncle says: ‘Not a dollar, ’cept what I might sell that furniture for,’ And he hasn’t sold it yet, I know. He just can’t make up his mind to do it, it seems.

“My maw says Mr. Stagg always was that way—that he hates to let go of anything he once gets in his hands. But it ain’t that, I tell her,” declared Chet. “It’s just that he can’t make up his mind to sell them things that was your mother’s, Car’lyn May,” added the boy, with a deeper insight into Mr. Stagg’s character than one might have given him credit for possessing.

But Carolyn May had heard some news that impressed her more deeply than this idiosyncrasy of Joseph Stagg’s. It made her suddenly quiet, and she was glad a customer came into the store just then to draw Chet Gormley’s attention.

The child had never thought before about how the good things of life came to her—her food, clothes, and lodging. She had never heard much talk of ways and means at home between her father and mother. When she had come to her uncle, if she had thought about it at all, she had supposed her parents had left ample means for her support, even if Uncle Joe did “take her home and look out for her,” as she had suggested to him at their first interview.

But, now, Chet Gormley’s chattering had given her a new view of the facts of the case. There had been no money left to spend for her needs. Uncle Joe was just keeping her out of charity!

“And Prince, too,” thought the little girl, with a lump in her throat. “He hasn’t got any more home than a rabbit! And Uncle Joe don’t really like dogs—not even now.

“Oh, dear me!” pursued Carolyn May. “It’s awful hard to be an orphan. But to be a poor orphan—just a charity one—is a whole lot worse, I guess.

“Of course, uncles aren’t like little girls’ real parents. Papas and mammas are glad, I guess, to pay for clothes and food and schoolbooks, and everything. But if a little girl is only a charity orphan, there aren’t really any folks that want to support her. I wonder if I ought to stay with Uncle Joe and Aunty Rose and make them so much trouble?”

The thought bit deep into the little girl’s very impressionable mind. The idle chatter of the not very wise, if harmless, Chet Gormley was destined to cause Carolyn May much perturbation of spirit.

She did not remain at the store until her uncle returned. Chet urged her to stay and go home with him for dinner when Mr. Stagg came back, but the little girl did not feel that she could do this. She wished to be alone and to think over this really tragic thing that faced her—the ugly fact that she was a “charity child.”

“And you’re a charity dog, Prince Cameron,” she said aloud, looking down at the mongrel who walked sedately beside her along the country road. “I don’t expect you ever thought of it. You never did have any money, and you don’t really know who your parents are. You began being a charity dog so early that it hasn’t never mattered to you at all—that’s how I s’pose it must be.

“And, then, you were always loved. Papa loved you, and so did mamma; and, of course, I always loved you to death, Princey!” she cried, putting both arms suddenly around the dog’s neck.

“I—I guess that’s where it must be,” pursued Carolyn May. “If persons are only loved, it doesn’t matter if they are charity. The love takes all the sting out of being poor, I guess. But I don’t know if Uncle Joe just does love me or not.”

The little girl had loitered along the road until it was now dinner time. Indeed, Aunty Rose would have had the meal on the table twenty minutes earlier. Mr. Stagg had evidently remained at The Corners to sell the cow and eat dinner, too—thus “killing two birds with one stone.”

And here Carolyn May and Prince were at Mr. Parlow’s carpenter shop, just as the old man was taking off his apron preparatory to going in to his dinner. When Miss Amanda was away nursing, the carpenter ate at a neighbour’s table.

Now, Miss Amanda appeared on the side porch.

“Where are you going, little girl?” she asked, smiling.

“Home to Aunty Rose,” said Carolyn May bravely. “But I guess I’m late for dinner.”

“I didn’t know but something had happened,” said Mr. Parlow, going, heavy-footed, up the porch steps, “when I seen Joe Stagg hikin’ by more’n two hour ago.”

Carolyn May told about the man wanting to buy the cow. Mr. Parlow sputtered something from the depths of the wash-basin about the buyer “payin’ two prices for the critter, if he bought her of Joe Stagg,” but his daughter hastened to cover this by saying:

“Don’t you want to come in and eat with us, Carolyn May? Your own dinner will be cold.”

“Oh, may I?” cried the little girl. Somehow, she did not feel that she could face Uncle Joe just now with this new thought that Chet Gormley’s words had put into her heart. Then she hesitated, with her hand on the gate latch.

“Will there be some scraps for Prince?” she asked. “Or bones?”

“I believe I can find something for Prince,” Miss Amanda replied. “I owe him more than one good dinner, I guess, for killing that snake. Come in, and we will see.”

The little girl at once became more cheerful. She washed her hands and face at the pump bench, as had Mr. Parlow. She found his big spectacles for him (Miss Amanda declared he always managed to lose them when he took them off); and Carolyn May wiped the lenses, too, before the carpenter set them on his nose again.

“There! I believe I kin see good for the first time to-day,” he declared. “I reckon I could have seen my work better all the forenoon if I’d had my specs polished up that-a-way. You air a spry young’un, Carolyn May.”

With this heart-warming word of approval, they went in to dinner. Miss Amanda was already “dishing up.” Unlike the custom at the Stagg house, the Parlows ate in the dining-room. The kitchen was small.

It seemed quite like old times to Carolyn May. Miss Amanda’s way of setting the table and serving the food was like her mamma’s way. There were individual bread-and-butter plates, and a knife for one’s butter and another for one’s meat, and several other articles of table furnishings that good Aunty Rose knew nothing about.

Carolyn May thought that Miss Amanda, in her house dress and ruffled apron, with her sleeves turned back above her dimpled, brown elbows, was prettier than ever. Miss Amanda had retained her youthfulness to a remarkable degree. Although she was quiet, there was a sparkle in her brown eyes, and a brisk note in her full, contralto voice that charmed the little girl. Her cheerful observations quite enlivened Carolyn May again.

Even Mr. Parlow proved to be amusing when he was “warmed up.”

“So you didn’t want to go home with Chet Gormley for dinner, eh?” he repeated. “Mebbe you thought Chet wouldn’t leave nothin’ for anybody else to eat?”

“Oh, no, Mr. Parlow, it wasn’t that!” Carolyn May said, shaking her head.

“But it might ha’ been,” chuckled the carpenter, “if you’d ever seen Chet eat.”

“Now, father!” admonished Miss Amanda.

“Never did see him eat, did you?” pursued the carpenter, still chuckling.

“No, sir.”

“Wal, he’s holler to his heels, and it’s an all-fired long holler, at that! Chet worked for Deacon Allbright, out on the South Road, ’fore he went to Stagg’s store. He only worked there part of a season, for he an’ the deacon couldn’t get along—no more’n twin brothers,” declared Mr. Parlow.

“Fust place, the deacon is rayther near—has enough on the table to eat, but jest enough, an’ that’s all. One o’ them tables where there ain’t no scrapin’s for ary cat or dog when the folks is through. But, to hear Deacon Allbright ask a blessin’ on it, you’d think ev’ry meal was a banquet.

“Wal, Chet was a boy, an’ he was tearin’ hungry, I reckon, when he got to the table, and the deacon’s long-winded prayers was too much for Chet’s appetite. With the dinner dished up and his plate full, that poor hungry little snipe had to wait while the deacon filled his mouth with big words.

“An’ one day at dinner, when they had some visitors,” chuckled Mr. Parlow, “it got too much for Chet Gormley. Ha’f-way through the deacon’s blessin’ the boy began to eat. I spect he couldn’t help it. The deacon didn’t have his eyes shut very tight, an’ he seen him, and frowned.

“But that didn’t make no manner o’ odds to Chet. He’d got a taste, and his appetite was whetted. He begun mowin’ away like a good feller. With righteous indignation, the deacon cleared his throat, and then ended his long prayer with this:

“An’ for what we air about to receive, and for what Chet Gormley has already received, let us be truly grateful.”

Carolyn May laughed politely, but she could sympathise with poor Chet. He did look hungry, he was so long and lathlike. So they chatted throughout the meal, and the little girl began to feel better in her mind.

“I think you are lovely, Miss Amanda,” she said as she helped wipe the dishes after the carpenter had gone back to the shop. “I shall always love you. I guess that anybody who ever did love you would keep right on doing so till they died! They just couldn’t help it!”

“Well, now, that is a compliment!” laughed Miss Amanda. “You think if I once made friends I couldn’t lose them?”

“I’m sure they’d always love you—just the same,” repeated Carolyn May earnestly. She had Uncle Joe in mind now. “How could they help doing it? Even if—if they didn’t darest show it.”

“What’s that?” asked Miss Amanda, looking at her curiously.

“Yes, ma’am. Maybe they wouldn’t darest show it,” said the little girl confidently. “But they’d just have to love you. You must be a universal fav’rite, Miss Amanda.”

“Indeed?” said the woman, laughing again, yet with something besides amusement expressed in her countenance. “And how about you, Chicken Little? Aren’t you universally beloved, too?”

“Oh, I don’t expect so, Miss Amanda,” said the child. “I wish I was.”

“Why aren’t you?”

“I—I—Well, I guess it’s just because I’m not,” Carolyn May said desperately. “You see, after all, Miss Amanda, I’m only a charity child.”

“A what?” gasped Miss Amanda, almost dropping the salad dish she was herself wiping. “What are you, child?”

“I’m charity,” Carolyn May repeated, having hard work to choke back the tears. “You know—my papa and mamma—didn’t—didn’t leave any money for me.”

“Oh, my child!!” exclaimed Miss Amanda. “Who told you that?”

“I—I just heard about it,” confessed the little visitor.

“Not from Aunty Rose Kennedy?”

“Oh, no, ma’am.”

“Did that—Did your uncle tell you such a thing?”

“Oh, no! He’s just as good as he can be. But, of course, he doesn’t much like children. You know he doesn’t. And he just ’bominates dogs!

“So, you see,” added the child, “I am charity. I’m not like other little girls that’s got papas and mammas. Course, I knowed that before, but it didn’t ever seem—seem so hard as it does now,” she confessed, with a sob.

“My dear! my dear!” cried Miss Amanda, dropping on her knees beside the little girl, “don’t talk so! I know your uncle must love you.”

“Do you s’pose so?” queried Carolyn May, trying not to cry.

“He must! How could he help loving you? Immersed as Joseph Stagg is in business and his own selfish projects, he cannot be so hard-hearted as not to love his only sister’s child.”

Carolyn May clutched at her, suddenly and tightly.

“Oh, Miss Mandy!” she gasped, “don’t you s’pose he loves other folks, too? You know—folks he’d begun to love ever so long ago?”

The woman’s smooth cheeks burned suddenly, and she stood up.

“I’m ’most sure he’d never stop loving a person, if he’d once begun to love ’em,” said Carolyn May, with a high opinion of the faithfulness of Uncle Joe’s character. “But how do I know he ever has loved me the least tiny bit?”

Miss Amanda was evidently impressed by this query. How could the child be sure? Mr. Stagg was not in the habit of revealing his deeper thoughts and feelings to the world. And, yet, if she would but admit it, Amanda Parlow believed that she, if any person could, rightly measured the hardware dealer’s character.

She sat down in a low rocking-chair and drew Carolyn May into her lap. The little girl sobbed a bit, but rested her head quietly on the woman’s bosom.

“Do you want to know if your Uncle Joe loves you?” she asked Carolyn May at last. “Do you?”

“Oh, I do!” cried the little girl.

“Then ask him,” advised Miss Amanda. “That’s the only way to do with Joe Stagg, if you want to get at the truth. Out with it, square, and ask him.”

“Oh, Miss Mandy! would you dare?” gasped Carolyn May.

“It doesn’t matter what I’d dare,” said the other drily. “You go ahead and ask him—and ask him point-blank.”

“I will do it,” Carolyn May said seriously. Afterwards she wondered if that were not the way, too, to settle the difficulty between Uncle Joe and pretty Miss Amanda.

After the child had gone the woman went back into the little cottage, and her countenance did not wear the farewell smile that Carolyn May had looked back to see.

Gripping at her heart was the old pain she had suffered years before, and the conflict that had scared her mind so long ago was roused again. Time, if not the great physician for all wounds, surely dulls the ache of them. Miss Amanda’s emotions had been dulled during the years which had passed since she and Joseph Stagg had broken their troth. Carolyn May—surely with the best intentions in the world—had rasped this wound. The woman sat in the kitchen rocker and wrung her hands tightly as she thought.

How peacefully, how beautifully, her life had begun! She had bloomed into young womanhood and had met every prospect of happiness on its threshold. She had loved and had been loved. She had been as sure of her lover’s heart in those days as she was of her own.

Then had come the crash of all her hopes and all her believing. Too proud to demand an explanation of her lover, too much her father’s daughter to show Joseph Stagg what she really felt and suffered, Amanda Parlow had gone her way, not steeling her heart to tenderness, but striving to satisfy its longings with a work which, after all, she realised was a thankless task.

She lavished her sympathy on the afflicted; but, deep in her soul, she felt no satisfaction in this. She felt that the higher qualities of her nature were not developed. She craved that satisfaction in life which a woman finds in a home, in a husband, and in little children.

“Oh, Joe! Oh, Joe! How could you?” she moaned, rocking herself to and fro. “How could you?”

CHAPTER XIII—BREAKING THROUGH

Carolyn May had no intention of speaking to Uncle Joe about her visit to the carpenter and Miss Amanda; yet, having sounded the hardware dealer on that point before, she did not think he would really mind if she called on the “pretty lady.”

There was something else—something very much more important—that she desired to talk to Uncle Joe about, and she was thinking very hard over it as she trimmed the long grass about the three little baby graves in the Kennedy lot and about the longer grave of Aunty Rose’s husband.

“Now I have caught the culprit,” said a voice behind her, and Carolyn May looked up to see the Reverend Afton Driggs smiling down at her.

“It had begun to puzzle me why this little patch of our old graveyard looked so much better than the rest. I might have known you had something to do with it,” went on the minister.

Carolyn May sighed. “I just wish I could clean up all this cemetery. I think, maybe, it would please them.”

“Please whom?” asked the minister rather startled.

“Why, the folks that are buried here! I suppose they must know about it. Their spirits, of course—the parts of ’em that keep on living. I should think it would please ’em if their graves were kept neat.”

Mr. Driggs looked thoughtfully about the untidy graveyard.

“It would seem as though ‘out of sight is out of mind’ in many cases of old graveyards, Carolyn May. Yes, you are right. Families move away or die out entirely. The burial lots are left to the mercy of strangers.

“‘Brother, keep my memory green!’ And we forget the friend who has really meant much to us—or, perhaps, we beflower the grave once a year. But that does not keep his memory green; it is only a salve to our own consciences. Perhaps Memorial Day is of doubtful value, after all.”

Probably Carolyn May had not heard the clergyman’s comment. Surely, she had not understood it. But she said now:

“Yes. There’s Miss Wade—over yonder.”

“Eh?” exclaimed the minister, turning quickly, expecting to see the person of whom Carolyn May spoke. “There’s who?”

“Miss Wade. Or, I s’pose she was a miss. She’s not a ‘spouse,’ or a ‘beloved relict,’ or ‘wife of the above.’ So, I guess, she was a maiden lady.”

“Oh!” ejaculated the clergyman. “That old stone in the corner?”

“Yes, sir. That leany one. You know it says: ‘Lydia Wade. Died of smallpox. Anno Domini, 1762.’

“I know what anno Domini means. It’s after the birth of Christ. I thought, at first, it was the name of somebody else buried in the same grave—and that he had smallpox, too.

“It must be dreadful to have smallpox and be buried off in one corner of the graveyard by one’s self. Do you s’pose they did that to Miss Wade ’cause they were ’fraid of other folks here catching it?”

“It might be, my dear,” said the clergyman. “But she was buried a long, long time ago. Probably before there was any church here.”

“Well, I guess Miss Wade was buried—poor thing!—so long ago that there isn’t any danger of catching the smallpox from her,” sighed the little girl, yet with relief in her tone. “Anyway, I’m not afraid, for I’ve been vaccernated, and it took!”

The Reverend Afton Driggs thought this a rather gruesome subject for Carolyn May; but, with the latter, everything worth talking about at all could be given a cheerful atmosphere. She got to her feet with a sigh of satisfaction, and Prince awakened out of his doze in the shelter of the wall.

“There! I spect this is the last chance I’ll have to clean up this place ’fore snow flies. Tim, the hackman, says it is bound to snow soon, and the frost has burned ’most all the grass.”

“I presume winter is almost upon us,” agreed Mr. Driggs. “Does the thought of it make you unhappy?”

“Me? Oh, no, Mr. Driggs! I guess we can be just as happy in winter as in summer—or fall—or spring. All we’ve got to do is to look up, and not down, all the time. See how blue the sky is! And there are wild geese flying over, aren’t there?” she cried.

“Why, even the wild geese must look up, Mr. Driggs. They’re looking for where it’s going to be warm weather, with the streams and ponds open, I s’pose. So, after all, I guess they’re wiser than some human folks, even if they are geese. Don’t you think so?”

“I believe you, Carolyn May,” cried the minister, taking her little hand in his own as they walked out of the churchyard.

Tim, the hackman, was a true weather prophet. That very night the first snow flurry of the season drove against the west window panes of the big kitchen at the Stagg homestead. It was at supper time.

“I declare for’t,” said Mr. Stagg, “I guess winter’s onto us, Aunty Rose.”

“It has made an early start,” agreed the housekeeper. “I trust you have made everything snug and fast for the season, Joseph Stagg.”

“I reckon so,” said the hardware dealer easily. “Plenty of wood in the shed and a full pork barrel,” and he chuckled.

Just then Prince whined out on the cold porch and rattled his chain. Uncle Joe never seemed to notice it!

Carolyn May went to bed that evening in a much more serious mood than usual. Before going she got a heap of old sacks from the woodshed for poor Prince to snuggle down in.

This snow did not amount to much; it was little more than a hoar-frost, as Mr. Stagg said. It frosted the brown grass, but melted away in the paths. This might be, however, the last chance for a Sunday walk in the woods for some time, and Carolyn May did not propose to miss it. It was the one thing Uncle Joe did for her that the little girl could hope was done because he loved her—“oh, a teeny, weeny mite!”

Of course, uncles and guardians just had to take little girls home and feed and clothe them—or else send them to a poorhouse. Carolyn May understood that. But going for a Sunday walk was different. Uncle Joe’s yielding to her desire in this matter awoke the fluttering hope in the child’s breast that she was beloved.

On this Sunday she wished particularly to get him off by himself. Her heart was filled with a great purpose. She felt that they must come to an understanding.

They walked to the very glade where they had met Miss Amanda Parlow, and Prince had killed the blacksnake. Somehow, their steps always seemed to turn that way. But they had never come upon Miss Amanda in their walks a second time.

On this particular occasion Uncle Joe sat down upon the log by the brook where Miss Amanda had once sat. Carolyn May stood before him.

“Uncle Joe,” the little girl said, her blue eyes dark with trouble, “will you tell me something?”

“I reckon so, child, if I can,” he responded, looking at her curiously.

“Am—am I just charity, Uncle Joe?”

“Huh? What’s that, Car’lyn May?” he exclaimed, startled.

“Am I just a charity orphan? Didn’t my papa leave any money a-tall for me? Did you take me just out of charity?”

“Bless me!” gasped the hardware dealer.

“I—I wish you’d answer me, Uncle Joe,” went on Carolyn May with a brave effort to keep from crying. “Isn’t there any money left for me—and Princey?”

Joseph Stagg was too blunt a person to see his way clear to dodging the question. And he could not speak a falsehood.

“Hum! Well, I’ll tell you, Car’lyn May. There isn’t much left, and that’s a fact. It isn’t your father’s fault. He thought there was plenty. But a business he invested in got into bad hands, and the little nest egg he’d laid up for his family was lost.”

“All lost, Uncle Joe?” quavered Carolyn May.

“All lost,” repeated the hardware merchant firmly.

“Then—then I am just charity. And so’s Prince,” whispered Carolyn May. “I—I s’pose we could go to the poorhouse, Prince and me; but they mayn’t like dogs there.”

“What’s that?” ejaculated Joseph Stagg in a sharp tone. “What’s that?” he repeated.

“I—I know you aren’t just used to children,” went on Carolyn May, somewhat helplessly. “You’re real nice to me, Uncle Joe; but Prince and me—we really are a nuisance to you.”

The man stared at her for a moment in silence, but the flush that dyed his cheeks was a flush of shame. The very word he had used on that fateful day when Carolyn May Cameron had come to The Corners! He had said to himself that she would be a nuisance.

“Maybe we ought to have gone to a poorhouse right at first,” stammered the little girl, when Mr. Stagg broke in on her observation in a voice so rough that she was startled.

“Bless me, child! Who put such an idea into your head?”

“I—I thought of it myself, Uncle Joe.”

“Don’t you like it any more here with Aunty Rose and—and me?” he demanded.

“Oh, yes! Only—only, Uncle Joe, I don’t want to stay, if we’re a nuisance, Prince and me. I don’t want to stay, if you don’t love me.”

Joseph Stagg had become quite excited. He stood up, running his fingers through his bushy hair, and knocking off his hat.

“Bless me!” he finally cried once more. “How do you know I don’t love you, Car’lyn May?”

“Why—why—But, Uncle Joe! how do I know you do love me?” demanded the little girl. “You never told me so!”

The startled man sank upon the log again.

“Well, maybe that’s so,” he murmured. “I s’pose it isn’t my way to be very—very—softlike. But listen here, Car’lyn May.”

“Yes, sir.”

“I ain’t likely to tell you very frequent how much I—I think of you. Ahem! But you’d better stop worrying about such things as money and the like. What I’ve got comes pretty near belonging to you. Anyway, unless I have to go to the poorhouse myself, I reckon you needn’t worry about going,” and he coughed again drily.

“As far as us loving you—Well, your Aunty Rose loves you.”

“Oh, I know she does!” agreed Carolyn May, nodding.

“Hum! How do you know that so well, and yet you don’t know that I love you?”

“Oh—well—now,” stammered Carolyn May, “when there isn’t anybody else around but Aunty Rose and me, she tells me so.”

“Hum!” Mr. Stagg cleared his throat. “Well, there isn’t anybody else around here but you and me—and the dog,” and his eyes twinkled; “so I’ll admit, under cross-examination, that I love you.”

“Oh, Uncle Joe!” She bounded at him, sobbing and laughing. “Is it really so? Do you?”

For the first time Joseph Stagg lifted her upon his knee. She snuggled up against his vest and put one little arm around his neck—as far as it would go.

“Dear Uncle Joe!” she sighed ecstatically. “I don’t mind if I am charity. If you love me, it takes all the sting out. And I’ll help to make you happy, too!”

“Bless me, child!” came huskily, “ain’t I happy enough?”

“Why, Uncle Joe, I don’t believe you can be really and truly happy, when you are always worrying about business. You don’t ever seem to have time to look up and see the sky, or stop to hear the birds sing.

“Seems to me, Uncle Joe,” concluded Carolyn May, giving a happy little jump on his lap, “that if you let your mind sort o’ run on—on something besides hardware once in a while, maybe you would have time to show me how much you loved me. Then I wouldn’t have to ask.”

The man looked at her somewhat blankly. Then he turned his head, ran his hand through his bushy hair, and gazed away meditatively.

The little girl had awakened his heart. And that heart was very, very sore.

CHAPTER XIV—A FIND IN THE DRIFTS

He went out and fed the fowls for Aunty Rose and did the other chores. But when he started for the store, promising to send Chet Gormley up to dig the paths, he had to wade through drifts higher than the top rail of the fences.

“Don’t—don’t they shovel up the snow and put it in carts and carry it all away?” asked Carolyn May of Aunty Rose.

“Who ever heard the like?” returned Mrs. Kennedy. “What kind of a way is that to do, child? And where would they cart it to? There’s just as much snow in one place as there is in another.”

“Why, in New York,” explained the little girl, “there’s always an army of men at work after a snowstorm—poor men, you know. And lots and lots of wagons. My papa used to say the snow was a blessing to the poor who wanted to earn a little money.

“Of course, lots of the men that shovel snow don’t have warm coats—or mittens, even—or overshoes! They wrap their feet in potato sacks to keep them warm and dry.”

“Well, well,” murmured Aunty Rose. “So that’s what they do with snow in the city, is it? Live and learn.”

Uncle Joe had shovelled off the porch and steps, and Prince had beaten his own dooryard in the snow in front of his house. For he had a house of his own, now—a roomy, warm one—built by Mr. Parlow.

It must be confessed that, although Uncle Joe paid for the building of this dog-house, it never would have been built by Jedidiah Parlow had it not been for Carolyn May. At first the grouchy old carpenter refused to do the job.

“I ain’t got to work for Joe Stagg’s money—not yit, I guess,” growled the carpenter. “Tell him to git somebody else to build his house.”

“Oh, but Mr. Parlow,” gasped Carolyn May, quite amazed, “it isn’t for Uncle Joe, you know!”

“What ain’t for your Uncle Joe?” demanded Mr. Parlow.

“The dog-house.”

“Why ain’t it? His money’s goin’ to pay for it, I reckon!”

“Oh, yes, that’s so,” admitted Carolyn May. “But Prince is going to live in it, and, you know, Prince is a friend of yours, Mr. Parlow.”

“Wal, no gittin’ around sich logic, I do allow,” grunted the old man, his eyes twinkling, and the flush of anger dying out of his cheeks. “I s’pose it is fur the dog. And the poor beast ain’t nobody’s enemy. Wal!”

So Prince had his warm house for the winter. Now Carolyn May put on her rubber boots and warm coat and hood and went out to release the dog for his morning run. His “morning scramble” would be the better term on this occasion. Why, at the first bound he was buried in a drift!

“Isn’t it lucky,” said Carolyn May to Aunty Rose, who stood in the doorway, “that Prince can smell his way around so well? If it wasn’t for his nose, he’d never be able to find his way out of those drifts. If I fell down in one, I know I wouldn’t be able to smell my way out again.”

But after Chet Gormley had come and dug the paths, and the ox-teams had come along with ploughs to break out the roads, she found it possible to go to school. She took Prince with her.

Prince had learned to behave very well at school now. He was not allowed in the schoolroom, but he remained on the porch or went back home, as he pleased. But he was always waiting at the door for his little mistress at recess and when the session closed.

At noon Uncle Joe came home, dragging a sled—a big roomy one, glistening with red paint. Just the nicest sled Carolyn May had ever seen, and one of the best the hardware dealer carried in stock.

“Oh, my, that’s lovely!” breathed the little girl in awed delight. “That’s ever so much better than any sled I ever had before. And Prince could draw me on it, if I only had a harness for him. He used to drag me in the park. Of course, if he saw a cat, I had to get off and hold him.”

Mr. Stagg, once started upon the path of good deeds, seemed to like it. At night he brought home certain straps and rivets, and in the kitchen, much to Aunty Rose’s amazement, he fitted Prince to a harness which the next day Carolyn May used on the dog, and Prince drew her very nicely along the beaten paths.

“But, if anybody would have told me, I’m free to confess I would not have believed it,” Aunty Rose declared, referring to Mr. Stagg’s actions in stronger language than Carolyn May had ever heard her use before.

Carolyn May made a practice now of kissing Uncle Joe good-night when he started for the store after supper. “’Cause I’m always in bed when you get home,” she explained.

Aunty Rose appeared not to notice this display of affection, and after a time Mr. Stagg got so used to it that he positively did not blush. But she climbed right into his lap and kissed him for the harness and sled, and the housekeeper felt in duty bound to comment upon it.

“You’re on the road to spoil that child, Joseph Stagg,” she said.

“Ahem!” coughed the hardware dealer, eyeing her with more boldness than he was usually able to display. “Ahem! I reckon somebody else around here began the spoiling—if any—Aunty Rose.”

And the woman smiled grimly. “Well,” she said, “you should not be in your second childhood—at your age.”

By Saturday the roads were in splendid condition for sleighing. The heavy sleds, transporting timber or sawed planks from the camps and mills to town, packed the snow firmly.

So Carolyn May went sledding. Soberly, Prince drew the new red sled and his little mistress along the road towards Miss Amanda’s. Of late the little girl wanted to see the carpenter’s daughter just as frequently as possible. There was a secret understanding between Miss Parlow and Carolyn May—something both thought of continually, but of which neither spoke directly.

Carolyn May knew that the pretty lady was glad that Uncle Joe had come to love her. Every mark of affection that the hardware merchant showed his little niece the latter retailed to Miss Amanda, and each event lost nothing in the telling.

Now she desired to show her friend the new sled and Prince’s harness. Mr. Stagg might still pass the Parlow house with his face averted; nevertheless, his praises were sung to Miss Amanda continually by Carolyn May.

“Now, Prince,” said the little girl as they set forth, “I do hope we don’t meet any cats—or other dogs, either. Dogs are bad enough; but, you know, if you see a cat you cannot keep your mind on what you are doing.”

Prince whined and wagged his ridiculous tail. It did seem as though he knew just what she was talking about.

However, until they got away from The Corners, at least, they met with no adventure. The blacksmith hailed Carolyn May—he was a jolly fellow—and asked her if she wanted to have her horse sharpened.

“No, thank you, Mr. Lardner,” the little girl replied. “You see, Prince has got his claws, so he can’t slip on the hard snow. He doesn’t need to be sharpened like the horses.”

It was not altogether a pleasant afternoon, for there was a curtain of haze being drawn over the sun, and the wind was searching. And not only did the wind cut sharply, but it blew clouds of light snow from the tops of the drifts into one’s face and eyes. Carolyn May almost wished she had not started for Miss Amanda’s house—and this before she was halfway to her destination.

Prince, however, did not seem to mind it much. The sled slipped easily over the beaten snow, and Carolyn May was a light load for him, for Prince was a strong dog.

Out of sight of the houses grouped at The Corners the road to town seemed as lonely as though it were a veritable wilderness. Here and there the drifts had piled six feet deep, for the wind had a free sweep across the barrens.

“Now, there’s somebody coming,” said Carolyn May, seeing a moving object ahead between the clouds of drifting snow spray. “Is it a sleigh, Princey, or just a man?”

She lost sight of the object, then sighted it again.

“It must be a man. It can’t be a bear, Princey.” Everybody had told her there were no more bears left in the woods about Sunrise Cove.

“And, anyway, I’m only afraid of bears at night—when I go up to bed in the dark,” Carolyn May told herself. “Here it is broad daylight!”

Besides, if it were any such animal, Prince would surely give tongue. He only sniffed and pricked up his ears. The strange object had disappeared again.

It was just at the place where the spring spouted out of the rocky hillside and trickled across the road. There was a sort of natural watering trough here in the rock where the horses stopped to drink. The dog drew the little girl closer to the spot.

“Where has that man gone to? If it was a man.”

Prince stopped suddenly and whined.

“What is the matter, Princey?” demanded Carolyn May, really quite disturbed. There was something in the drift that the wind was heaping beside the beaten track. What could it be? “Prince!”

The dog barked, and then looked around at his mistress, as though to say: “See there!”

Carolyn May tumbled off the sled in a hurry. When she did so she slipped on a patch of snow-covered ice and fell. But she was not hurt.

“There! that’s where the water runs across the road. It’s all slippy—Oh!”

It was the sleeve of a man’s rough coat thrust out of the snowbank that brought this last cry to the child’s lips. In a very few moments the sign of the unfortunate wayfarer would have been completely covered in the drifting snow.

“Oh, oh! It’s a man!” burst from Carolyn May’s trembling lips. “How cold he must be!”

She was cold herself—and frightened. She had heard of people dying in the snow; and this person seemed perfectly helpless.

“Oh, dear me, Prince!” she cried, recovering a measure of her courage. “We can’t let him die here! We’ve just got to save him!”

She plumped down on her knees and began brushing the snow away. She uncovered his shoulder. She took hold of this with her mittened hands and tried to shake the prone figure.

He moved. It was ever so little, but it inspired Carolyn May with hope. She was not so much afraid of him now, she told herself. He was not dead.

“Oh, do wake up! Please wake up!” she cried, digging away the snow as fast as possible.

A shaggy head was revealed, with an old cap pulled down tightly over the ears. The man moved again and grunted something. He half turned over, and there was blood upon the snow, and a great frosted cake of it on the side of his face.

Carolyn May was dreadfully frightened. The man’s head was cut and the blood was smeared over the front of his jacket. Now she could see a puddle of it, right where he had fallen on the ice—just as she had fallen herself. Only, he had struck his head on a rock and cut himself.

“You poor thing!” murmured Carolyn May. “Oh, you mustn’t lie here! You must get up! You’ll—you’ll be frozen!”

“Easy, mate,” muttered the man. “I ain’t jest right in my top-hamper, I reckon. Hold hard, matey.”

He tried to get up. He rose to his knees, but pitched forward again. Carolyn May was not afraid of him now—only troubled.

“I’ll take you to Miss Amanda,” cried the little girl, pulling at his coat again. “She’s a nurse, and she’ll know just what to do for you. Come, Prince and I will take you.”

The dog stood by whining, acting as though he knew just what the trouble was and was anxious to help. The man struggled up into a kneeling posture.

“My top-hamper ain’t jest right,” he murmured again. “That was a crack! Blood! I reckon I’m some hurt, miss.”

“Well, I should say you were hurt!” Carolyn May responded briskly. “But I know Miss Mandy can fix you up. Let’s go there—now! It’s awfully cold standing here.”

“Belike I can’t get there,” mumbled the man, still on his knees.

“Oh, you must! It’s not far. You were coming towards The Corners, weren’t you?”

“I was bound out o’ town; yes, miss,” the man replied.

“Miss Amanda’s is the last house you passed, then. It isn’t far,” repeated Carolyn May.

“I—I don’t believe I kin make it, matey,” groaned the man, evidently not quite clear in his mind whom he was addressing. He weaved to and fro as he knelt, his eyes half-closed, muttering and groaning to himself.

“Oh, you mustn’t!” cried Carolyn May. “You mustn’t give up. Crawl onto my sled. Prince and I can drag you to Miss Amanda’s. Of course, we can.”

“Believe you’d better leave me here, matey,” muttered the man.

But Carolyn May would not hear to that. She bustled about, brought the sled closer to him, and made Prince stand around properly in his harness. Then she guided the half-blinded man to the sled, on which he managed to drop himself.

“But that dog can’t never pull me, matey,” he declared faintly.

“Oh, yes, he can,” said Carolyn May cheerfully. “I can help, too. When you have to do a thing, my Aunty Rose says, you just up and do it. Now, Princey—pull!”

CHAPTER XV—THE OLD SAILOR

Mr. Parlow made a clucking noise in his throat when he saw the blood.

“Guess you’re right, Car’lyn May,” he admitted. “Call Mandy. She must see this.”

Miss Amanda’s attention had already been attracted to the strange arrival. She ran out and helped her father raise the injured man from the sled. Together they led him into the cottage.

He was not at all a bad-looking man, although his clothing was rough and coarse. His hands were big and square, with blunt fingers, and the fingers were half-crooked, or half-closed, all the time. Afterwards Carolyn May learned this was because the old man was a sailor and had pulled on ropes so many years.

The trained nurse and her father helped the man to the couch, after removing his pilot coat. Miss Amanda brought warm water and bathed the wound, removing the congealed blood from his face and neck.

“I think there should be a stitch or two taken in this,” she said, “but Dr. Nugent is a long way off. I can dress it all right and bind it up. But if it was sewed, the wound would not leave so bad a scar.”

“That’s no matter—no matter at all, matey,” the man hastened to say. “I’ve no money for them doctors.”

“Ha!” coughed Mr. Parlow. “It’s not a matter of dollars—Well, Mandy, if you think you can fix him up all right——”

The nurse was ready with lint and bandages and a dark, pleasant-smelling balsam in a bottle. Carolyn May, who had untackled Prince on the porch, stood by, and watched Miss Amanda’s skilful fingers in wonder.

The old sailor did not even groan, so the child had no idea that the drops of perspiration that gathered on his brow, and which Miss Amanda finally wiped away so tenderly, were called into being by acute suffering.

When the last bandage was adjusted and the injured man’s eyes were closed, Mr. Parlow offered him a wine-glass of a home-made cordial. The sailor gulped it down, and the colour began to return to his cheeks.

“Where was you goin’, anyway?” demanded the carpenter. “This ain’t no good day to be travellin’ in. I don’t see what that child was a-thinkin’ on, to be out playin’ in such weather.”

“Lucky for me she was out,” said the sailor, more vigorously.

“Ya-as, I reckon that’s so,” admitted Mr. Parlow. “But, where was you goin’?”

“Lookin’ for a job, mate,” said the sailor. “There’s them in town that tells me I’d find work at Adams’ camp.”

“Ha! didn’t tell you ’twas ten mile away from here, did they?”

“Is it? Well, no, they didn’t tell me that,” admitted the visitor, “or I’d not started so late. You see, I come up on a schooner. This here lake boatin’ ain’t in my line. I’m deep-water, I am.”

“So I should s’pose,” said Mr. Parlow. “How’d you git up here, anyway?”

“The war,” said the visitor. “The war done it. Couldn’t git a good berth in any deep-water bottom. So I thought I’d try fresh-water sailin’. And now they tell me this here lake’ll be froze up solid and all the traffic stopped all winter long.”

“Likely to be,” admitted Mr. Parlow.

“Don’t it beat all?” murmured the sailor. “And me up in this cold country—and full of rheumatiz. I tell you, matey, I been workin’ as quartermaster’s mate on the old Cross and Crescent Line, a-scootin’ ’cross to Naples from N’York—there and back—goin’ on ten year. I ain’t goin’ to like it up here in this here cold, northern, snowbound country, I don’t believe.”

“What did you leave your boat for?” asked the carpenter curiously.

“What boat? This here lake schooner? I told you.”

“No. The other.”

“Oh, she was sunk. There’s things happenin’ over to the other side of the ocean, mate,” said the injured man earnestly, “that you wouldn’t believe—no, sir! The Cross and Crescent Line’s give up business till after the war’s over, I reckon.”

“You’d better not encourage him to talk any more, father,” interposed Miss Amanda, coming into the room again. “The best thing he can do for himself is to sleep for a while.”

“Thank ye, ma’am,” said the sailor humbly. “I’ll try.”

The carpenter went back to work. Miss Amanda took Carolyn May out into the kitchen. She looked at her rather curiously, and once she seemed about to speak seriously—perhaps about the injured sailor. Carolyn May sidetracked this, however, by asking:

“Don’t you think Prince is a very brave dog, Miss Amanda? You know, he’s almost like those Saint Bernard dogs that live in the Yalps and carry blankets and cunning little barrels around their necks to folks that get lost in the snow. You have seen pictures of ’em, haven’t you, Miss Amanda?”

“Yes, my dear,” agreed the pretty nurse, smiling.

“Only I never knew what the barrels were for,” admitted Carolyn May. “Now, if the dogs found the poor men in the water, drownding, maybe the barrels would float and help keep ’em from sinking.”

“I hardly think it probable that the barrels were for that purpose,” said Miss Amanda, laughing.

“Anyway,” urged Carolyn May, “Prince is just as brave as those other dogs.”

“Indeed, yes,” agreed the woman. “And I think that a certain little girl is very brave, too.”

“Oh, but I couldn’t have got the poor gentleman here, if it hadn’t been for Prince.”

“Quite true. And he deserves a reward for that. We’ll call him in and give him a party,” said Miss Amanda. “I have been saving some chicken bones for him.”

“Oh, my dear!” cried Carolyn May, “he just adores chicken bones. You are the very kindest lady, Miss Amanda! I love you, heaps and heaps—and so does Prince.”

Darkness came on apace. The sky had become overcast, and there was promise of a stormy night—more snow, perhaps. But Miss Amanda would not allow Carolyn May and Prince to start for home at once.

“Watch for your uncle, Carolyn May, out of the front-room window, and be all ready to go with him when he comes along,” said Miss Parlow. “No, it isn’t time for him yet. When the clock says ten minutes to five you can begin to look for him.”

“Oh, my! Miss Amanda,” said Carolyn May wonderingly, “how well you know his time for coming home, don’t you?”

Miss Amanda blushed and did not appear to think that question needed an answer. After that she seemed much preoccupied in mind.

When Uncle Joe came along, Carolyn May ran out and hailed him from the porch.

“Wait for me, Uncle Joe! Wait for me and Princey, please! Just let me get my mittens and Prince’s harness and kiss Miss Mandy.”

That last she did most soundly, and in full view of the man waiting in the white road. Miss Amanda’s tenderness, as she knelt on the porch to button Carolyn May’s coat, was marked by the hardware dealer—and also her shining brown hair and her eyes so bright and sparkling. But he made no comment on this picture when his little niece joined him.

“Oh, Uncle Joe, I’ve got just the wonderfulest story to tell you! Shall we harness Prince up again, or will you——”

“I can’t wait for the dog, Car’lyn May. I’m in a hurry. You oughtn’t to be out in this wind, either. Get aboard your sled, now, and I’ll drag you myself,” Mr. Stagg interrupted.

She obeyed him gaily. When he started off, she turned to wave her mittened hand to Miss Amanda, who still stood on the porch. But the door of the carpenter shop, where a lamp burned, was shut tightly.

“That woman will get her death of cold,” grumbled Uncle Joe, starting off at a round pace. “Don’t know enough to go in out o’ the cold.”

But Amanda Parlow did not notice the cold. She was thinking of a time, oh, so long ago! when Joe Stagg had seated her on his bright red sled and given her a ride. How her heart had beat when he had turned to gaze at her! And now—Slowly her eyes filled with tears, and again: