in it every Sunday morning.
A cold job it must have been, too!

We went into Duckford's dry-goods store, and Chris unwrapped all his
presents and showed them to me something for each of the six younger
than himself, even a rubber pig for the baby. Lena had given him one of
Tiny Soderball's bottles of perfume for his mother, and he thought he
would get some handkerchiefs to go with it. They were cheap, and he
hadn't much money left. We found a tableful of handkerchiefs spread out
for view at Duckford's. Chris wanted those with initial letters in the
corner, because he had never seen any before. He studied them seriously,
while Lena looked over his shoulder, telling him she thought the red
letters would hold their colour best. He seemed so perplexed that I
thought perhaps he hadn't enough money, after all. Presently he said
gravely:

'Sister, you know mother's name is Berthe. I don't know if I ought to
get B for Berthe, or M for Mother.'

Lena patted his bristly head. 'I'd get the B, Chrissy. It will please
her for you to think about her name. Nobody ever calls her by it now.'

That satisfied him. His face cleared at once, and he took three reds
and three blues. When the neighbour came in to say that it was time to
start, Lena wound Chris's comforter about his neck and turned up his
jacket collar--he had no overcoat--and we watched him climb into the
wagon and start on his long, cold drive. As we walked together up the
windy street, Lena wiped her eyes with the back of her woollen glove. 'I
get awful homesick for them, all the same,' she murmured, as if she were
answering some remembered reproach.

VI

WINTER COMES DOWN SAVAGELY over a little town on the prairie. The wind
that sweeps in from the open country strips away all the leafy screens
that hide one yard from another in summer, and the houses seem to draw
closer together. The roofs, that looked so far away across the green
tree-tops, now stare you in the face, and they are so much uglier than
when their angles were softened by vines and shrubs.

In the morning, when I was fighting my way to school against the wind,
I couldn't see anything but the road in front of me; but in the late
afternoon, when I was coming home, the town looked bleak and desolate to
me. The pale, cold light of the winter sunset did not beautify--it was
like the light of truth itself. When the smoky clouds hung low in the
west and the red sun went down behind them, leaving a pink