the
night telephone-operator, giving a number, waiting, cursing mildly,
waiting again, and at last growling, "Hello, Gus, this is the doctor.
Say, uh, send me up a team. Guess snow's too thick for a machine. Going
eight miles south. All right. Huh? The hell I will! Don't you go back
to sleep. Huh? Well, that's all right now, you didn't wait so very darn
long. All right, Gus; shoot her along. By!"

His step on the stairs; his quiet moving about the frigid room while he
dressed; his abstracted and meaningless cough. She was supposed to be
asleep; she was too exquisitely drowsy to break the charm by speaking.
On a slip of paper laid on the bureau--she could hear the pencil
grinding against the marble slab--he wrote his destination. He went out,
hungry, chilly, unprotesting; and she, before she fell asleep again,
loved him for his sturdiness, and saw the drama of his riding by night
to the frightened household on the distant farm; pictured children
standing at a window, waiting for him. He suddenly had in her eyes the
heroism of a wireless operator on a ship in a collision; of an explorer,
fever-clawed, deserted by his bearers, but going on--jungle--going----

At six, when the light faltered in as through ground glass and bleakly
identified the chairs as gray rectangles, she heard his step on the
porch; heard him at the furnace: the rattle of shaking the grate, the
slow grinding removal of ashes, the shovel thrust into the coal-bin,
the abrupt clatter of the coal as it flew into the fire-box, the fussy
regulation of drafts--the daily sounds of a Gopher Prairie life, now
first appealing to her as something brave and enduring, many-colored
and free. She visioned the fire-box: flames turned to lemon and metallic
gold as the coal-dust sifted over them; thin twisty flutters of purple,
ghost flames which gave no light, slipping up between the dark banked
coals.

It was luxurious in bed, and the house would be warm for her when
she rose, she reflected. What a worthless cat she was! What were her
aspirations beside his capability?

She awoke again as he dropped into bed.

"Seems just a few minutes ago that you started out!"

"I've been away four hours. I've operated a woman for appendicitis, in
a Dutch kitchen. Came awful close to losing her, too, but I pulled her
through all right. Close squeak. Barney says he shot ten rabbits last
Sunday."

He was instantly asleep--one hour of rest before he had to be up and
ready for th