"What does that put you in mind of?" she asked slowly.
"You mean the crackle of the kindling-wood and the snap of the coal as the flames begin to lick it?" I asked.
"U-m-m, yes; the crackle of the wood and the snap of the coal," said the girl in a dreamy tone.
"Home!" I cried, quick as a flash. "It makes me think of home—of the home I used to have," and my eyes blurred.
"Here, too! Home!" she replied softly. "Funny, isn't it, that we have so many ideas exactly alike? But I suppose that's because we were both brought up in the country."
"In the country!" I exclaimed in surprise. "I thought you were from Chicago."
"Oh, no; I'm from the country. I didn't go to Chicago till I was twenty. I lived all my life on a farm in Iowa, till I went up to get a job in Chicago after my father died and I was all alone in the world. We lived in the very wildest part of the State—in the part they call the 'Big Woods.' Oh, I know all about frontier life. And there's hardly any kind of 'roughing it' that I haven't done. I was born to it."
She laughed, opening the stove door, for the elbow of the pipe was now red-hot and threatening conflagration to the thin board partition behind, which divided the little room from that of the next lodger.
A loud thump upon the board partition startled us. We listened for a few moments,—at first with alarm,—and then realized that the noise was only the protest of a sleepy boarder.