cosy room Howard and Allie plunged, laughing and breathless after their
quick walk in the cold. A bright-faced little woman sat sewing by the
front window, holding up her work to catch the last fading light, and a
rosy boy, two years old, was tumbling about on the carpet, rolling over
and over the great dog, who was dozing as peacefully as if such
demonstrations were quite to his liking.

"Hullo, mammy! Hullo, Vic! Dinner ready?" exclaimed Howard, casting his
skates into the nearest chair, and moving up to the stove to warm his
chilled fingers.

"How was the skating?" asked his mother, looking up from her work to
smile at Allie, as she pulled off her coat and hat, and then caught up
the child from the floor.

"Fine; but we're 'most starved--at least, I am," returned Howard, as he
wriggled himself out of his coat and handed it to Allie, who received it
quite as a matter of course, and went away to hang it in its usual
place.

"Well, dinner is all ready, and papa will be here in a minute; so you
can go and tell Janey to take it up. Do you know," she added, with a
laugh which took all the sting from the reproof; "I think it is time my
boy learned to take his sister's coat for her, instead of expecting her
to wait on him."

"All right," answered Howard, by no means abashed by the rebuke. "Here,
sis, if you'll just bring back your coat and put it on again, I'll see
what can be done about it." And he bent over to stroke his mother's hair
with a boyish affection which filled her heart with gratitude for having
such a son, even while it sent her off to her toilet table to repair the
damages which his fingers had wrought. Then he marched out to the
kitchen to tease Janey, until she threatened to pour the soup over his
favorite pudding, unless he left her to take up the dinner in peace.

Mr. Burnam, Howard's father, was a successful civil engineer, who, in
the line of his professional life, had been ordered up and down the
West according to the demands of the great railroad corporation by whom
he was employed. The life of a locating engineer is much like that of
the soldier, in its need for strict obedience to orders, and for
eighteen years Mr. Burnam had been stationed, now here, now there,--on
the rolling prairies of Iowa, in the Dakota bad lands, in the alkali
deserts of Wyoming, and among the canons and passes of the Colorado
Rockies. Six months before this time he had been ordered to western
Montana, to lay out a poss