of fact, she had never been farther away from Manhattan Island than
Hartford, Connecticut, and that experience befell her in the middle of
an extremely torrid June. Perhaps a half-dozen times in the fifteen
years of her married life she had gone to Peekskill to visit her
mother and a married sister, but always in warm weather. Not that she
was too poor to make the trip to Peekskill as often as she liked, but
her mother and sister made it unnecessary by coming to New York for
frequent and sometimes protracted visits at the Bingle apartment, and
usually without first inquiring whether it would be convenient or
otherwise. She very sensibly realised that Mr. Bingle saw quite enough
of his wife's relatives in this way, and refused to drag him into the
country to see more of them. He had better use for his Sundays, and as
for his vacations, they were always spent at home in the laudable
effort to save a little money against the rainy day that people are
always talking about. So Mrs. Bingle stayed at home, and contrived to
love her good little husband more and more as each narrow day went by,
winter and summer, year in and year out, and not once did the iron of
discontent enter her soul. Some day, when they could really afford it,
they were going away for a month's fishing-trip in the wilds of Maine,
but all that could wait. It was something to look forward to, and
there is a lot in that.

Neither of them had ever dreamed that Syracuse was so near to the
North Pole, nor had they the remotest idea that the weather could be
so cold anywhere on earth as it was in the upper part of New York
State. The coldest days they had ever known in New York City--and they
had always believed that nothing could be colder--were balmy when
compared with that awful day on the outskirts of Syracuse--that bleak,
blighting day in the wind-swept graveyard where the mother of Thomas
Bingle slept.