seemed to see in one of them the despairing
face of the woman with the wisps of faded
hair blowing about her face.

"Well, what do you think of it?" Jim
cried, heartily, swinging her down from her
high seat, and kissing her as he did so.
"This is your home, my girl, and you are as
welcome to it as you would be to a palace,
if I could give it to you."

Annie put up her hands to hide the trem-
bling of her lips; and she let Jim see there
were tears in her eyes as an apology for not
replying. The young man with the red hair
took away the horses, and Jim, with his arm
around his wife's waist, ran toward the house
and threw open the door for her to enter.
The intense heat of two great stoves struck
in their faces; and Annie saw the big burner,
erected in all its black hideousness in the
middle of the front room, like a sort of
household hoodoo, to be constantly propi-
tiated, like the gods of Greece; and in the
kitchen, the new range, with a distracted
tea-kettle leaping on it, as if it would like
to loose its fetters and race away over the
prairie after its cousin, the locomotive.

It was a house of four rooms, and a