Selina approached Chris. His round face loomed out through the smoke like the sun in a fog. “Well, how goes it all the while?” Then he recognized her. “Um Gottes!—why, it’s Mis’ DeJong!” He wiped his great hand on a convenient towel, extended it in sympathy to the widow. “I heerd,” he said, “I heerd.” His inarticulateness made his words doubly effective.
“I’ve come in with the load, Mr. Spanknoebel. The boy and I. He’s still asleep in the wagon. May I bring him over here to clean him up a little before breakfast?”
“Sure! Sure!’ A sudden suspicion struck him. “You ain’t slept in the wagon, Mis’ DeJong! Um Gottes”
“Yes. It wasn’t bad. The boy slept the night through. I slept, too, quite a little.”
“Why you didn’t come here! Why” At the look in Selina’s face he knew then. “For nothing you and the boy could sleep here.”
“I knew that! That’s why.”
“Don’t talk dumb, Mrs. DeJong. Half the time the rooms is vacant. You and the boy chust as well—twenty cents, then, and pay me when you got it. But any way you don’t come in reg’lar with the load, do you? That ain’t for womans.”
“There’s no one to do it for me, except Jan. And he’s worse than nobody. Just through September and October. After that, maybe” Her voice trailed off. It is hard to be hopeful at three in the morning, before breakfast.
