was Jenny, with that bottom
drawerful, and pretty soon somebody that now was not, would be, and
would be wearing the drawerful and calling Jenny "mother," and would
know her better than any one else in the world. Mary could not imagine
that little boy of Lily's getting used to her--Mary--and calling
her--well, what would he call her? She hadn't thought of that....

"Bother," thought Mary Chavah, "there's going to be forty nuisances
about it that I s'pose I haven't even thought of yet."

She stood by the window. She had not lighted the lamp, so the world
showed white, not black. Snow makes outdoors look big, she thought. But
it was big--what a long journey it was to Idaho. Suppose ... something
happened to the man he was to travel with. John Blood was only a boy; he
would probably put the child's name and her address in the little
traveler's pocket, and these would be lost. The child was hardly old
enough to remember what to do. He would go astray, and none of them
would ever know what had become of him ... and what would become of him?
She saw him and his bundle of clothes alone in the station in the
City....

She turned from the window and mechanically mended the fire again. She
drew down the window shade and went to the coat closet to hang away her
wraps. Then abruptly she took up her purse, counted out the money in the
firelight, and went out the door and down the street in the dusk, and
into the post office, which was also the telegraph office,--one which
the little town owed to Ebenezer Rule, and it a rival to the other
telegraph office at the station.

"How much does it cost to send a telegram?" she demanded. "Idaho," she
answered the man's question, flushing at her omission.

While the man, Affer by name, laboriously looked it up,--covering
incredible little dirty figures with an incredibly big dirty
forefinger,--Mary stood staring at the list of names tacked below the
dog-eared Christmas Notice. She remembered that she had not yet signed
it herself. She asked for a pencil--causing confusion to the little
figures and delay to the big finger--and, while she waited, wrote her
name. "A good, sensible move," she thought, as she signed.

When Affer gave her the rate, thrusting finger and figures jointly
beneath the bars,--solicitous of his own accuracy,--Mary filed her
message. It was to John Blood, and it read:----

"Be sure you tie his tag on him good."

VII

Ebenezer Rule had meant to go to the C