Page:The gold brick (1910).djvu/80

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overcoat, and changed his clumsy cap for his helmet.

Annie had sat at her window all the afternoon, but, as the spring day wore toward its close, she began to realize that only the melancholy, and none of the promise of this first spring day had touched her. She had thrown open the window, to test the quality of the air. Now and then a warm breath came wandering in off the prairies, though when it met the cold, persistent wind from the lake, it hesitated, and timidly turned back. But Annie would not let herself doubt that the spring had come. She knew that in time the prairie wind would woo its way until it would be playing with the waves of the lake itself, the little waves that danced all day, blue and white, in the sunshine. And then the summer would come, and on Sunday afternoons Jimmy would take her out to Lincoln Park, and they would have their supper at Fisher's Garden.

Leadam Street was dull enough on week days; on Sundays it was wholly mournful.

Once Annie saw a woman, with a shawl over her head and a tin bucket in her hand, go into Englehardt's place, down the street. The woman went in