Momsey and Papa Sherwood took the train east an hour before Nan and Uncle Henry boarded that for Chicago. All went with a rush and clatter, and Nan found herself at last rumbling out of Tillbury, on her way to the northern wilderness, while a thin drive of fine snowflakes tapped on the car windows.
Chapter X. GEDNEY RAFFER
It was fortunate for Nan Sherwood that on the day of parting with her parents she had so much to do, and that there was so much to see, and so many new things of which to think.
She had never traveled to Chicago before, nor far from Tillbury at all. Even the chair car was new to the girl's experience and she found it vastly entertaining to sit at a broad window with her uncle in the opposite chair, gazing out upon the snowy landscape as the train hurried over the prairie.
She had a certain feeling that her Uncle Henry was an anomaly in the chair car. His huge bearskin coat and the rough clothing under it; his felt boots, with rubber soles and feet; the fact that he wore no linen and only a string tie under the collar of his flannel shirt; his great bronzed hands and blunted fingers with their broken nails, all these things set him apart from the other men who rode in the car.
Papa Sherwood paid much attention to the niceties of dress, despite the fact that his work at the Atwater Mills had called for overalls and, frequently, oily hands. Uncle Henry evidently knew little about stiff collars and laundered cuffs, or cravats, smart boots, bosomed shirts, or other dainty wear for men. He was quite innocent of giving any offence to the eye, however. Lying back in the comfortable chair with his coat off and his great lumberman's boots crossed, he laughed at anything Nan said that chanced to be the least bit amusing, until the gas-globes rang again.
It seemed to Nan as though there never was such a huge man before. She doubted if Goliath could have looked so big to young David, when the shepherd boy went out with his sling to meet the giant. Uncle Henry was six feet, four inches in height and broad in proportion. The chair creaked under his weight when he moved. Other people in the car gazed on the quite unconscious giant as wonderingly as did Nan herself.
“Uncle Henry,” she asked him once, “are all the men in the Big Woods as tall as you are?”
“Goodness me! No, child,” he chuckled. “But the woods don't breed many runts, that's a fact. There's some bigger than I. Long Sam Dorgan is near seven feet he isn't quite sure, for he's so ticklish that you can't ever measure him,” and Uncle Henry's chuckle burst into a full-fledged laugh. “He's just as graceful as a length of shingle lathing, too. And freckles and liver spots on his hands and face, well, he certain sure is a handsome creature.