brim which he was forever jerking off only to have it set firmly on again by the woman who seemed to fear the effects of the hot afternoon sun on his close-cropped head. But in the brief intervals when the hat was off you must have noted how the boy’s eyes were shining.
At their feet was the dog Pom, a mongrel whose tail bore no relation to his head, whose ill-assorted legs appeared wholly at variance with his sturdy barrel of a body. He dozed now, for it had been his duty to watch the wagon load at night, while Pervus slept.
A shabby enough little outfit, but magnificent, too. Here was Selina DeJong driving up the Halsted road toward the city instead of sitting, black-robed, in the farm parlour while High Prairie came to condole. In Selina, as they jogged along the hot dusty way, there welled up a feeling very like elation. Conscious of this, the New England strain in her took her to task. “Selina Peake, aren’t you ashamed of yourself! You’re a wicked woman! Feeling almost gay when you ought to be sad. . . Poor Pervus . . . the farm. . . Dirk. . . and you can feel almost gay! You ought to be ashamed of yourself!”
But she wasn’t, and knew it. For even as she thought this the little wave of elation came flooding over her again. More than ten years ago she had driven with Klaas Pool up that same road for the first time, and in spite of the recent tragedy of her father’s death, her youth, her loneliness, the terrifying thought of the new home to which she was going, a stranger among
