“We shall win!” she whispered hoarsely, as standing erect, hands clenched tight, she stood for a moment facing the bitter Arctic gale.
“Feel better now?” she asked, dropping again to the child’s side.
The child nodded.
“All right. Now we’ll bind it up tight and it will be fine.”
Five minutes later Florence saw the child’s head fall against her older sister’s side. Her pain gone, her cry stilled, she had fallen asleep. That was Florence’s second reward, but not her last.
As she once more crept beneath the warm covers in her tent, she felt the slender arms of Mary, her cousin, close about her and heard her murmur with a shudder: “It is so far and so cold!”
“She’s talking in her sleep again,” Florence told herself. Then, out of sympathy for the frailer girl, she too shuddered.
Yes, it had been a long way and even though it was early June, it was cold. Yet Florence thrilled at thought of it all. That journey, how it had unfolded, first on paper, second in their minds, then in reality!
Mark and Mary had lived with their mother in the Copper Country of Michigan. Because she had few relatives and was in need of a home, Florence had joined them there.
No copper was being mined, so there was no work and, struggle as they might, they had grown poorer and poorer.