"Are you cold?" she asked Wallace.
He turned a purple face upon her. "No—not much."
"I guess you better slip right down under the blankets," she advised.
The wind blew gray out of the north—a wild blast which stopped the young student's blood in his veins. He hated to give up, but he could no longer hold the blankets up over his knees, so he slipped down into the corner of the box, with his back to the wind, with the blankets drawn over his head.
The powerful girl slapped the reins down on the backs of the snorting horses, and encouraged them with shouts like a man: "Get out o' this, Dan! Hup there, Nellie!"
The wagon boomed and rattled. The floor of the box seemed beaten with a maul. The glimpses Wallace had of the land appalled him, it was so flat and gray and bare. The houses seemed poor, and drain-pipe scattered about told how wet it all was.
Herman sang at the top of his voice, and danced, and pounded his feet against the wagon box. "This ends it! If I can't come home without freezing to death, I don't come. I should have hired a rig, irrespective of you——"
The girl laughed. "Oh, you're getting thin-blooded, Herman. Life in the city has taken the starch all out of you."
"Better grow limp in a great city than freeze stiff in the country," he replied.
An hour's ride brought them into a yard before a large gray-white frame house.