and cried softly. There wasn't even a stewardess on this steamer to
comfort her. Sometimes the Major stopped outside and asked her quietly
what she would like. There was nothing she liked, but in the mid-
afternoon she pulled herself together and let the Major wrap her coat
about her and leaned on his arm to limp out of her stateroom and down
the wobbling gang-plank and across a dirty, water-soaked wharf to the
platform where the local train awaited. And after that she sat another
dreary hour, while the ancient engine complainingly coughed its way
through the bleak, gray woods to the ugly brown station that was their
destination.

It was late afternoon. The rain had not really ceased to fall, but the
sky was clearing a bit in the west as the girl stared curiously about
her, while the baggage man helped the trainmen with their luggage.
Suddenly the girl cried out with joy,

"Look, there is Maman's cart--"

For around the corner of the station space crept an ox-cart driven by
a half grown boy. But in the hollow of the plains, just before he had
reached that dreary town, the boy had stopped his cart and gathered
sprawling boughs of wild cherry blossoms, those first harbingers of
spring in that bleak northern country, and fastened them to the wooden
yoke that held the oxen to the wagon and tied the lovely things sweet
with rain, to the poles at the rear and made a sort of fairy chariot
for the little lady who was coming to dwell in the woods.

He smiled at her under his slouchy cap as he stumbled stiffly toward
the Major.