“Hello, there, youngsters! You all right?”
A shrill, childish voice replied: “Yes, sir.”
“Well, you’d better crawl out o’ that an’ git in where it’s warmer, an’ git some o’ Ma’am Hickey’s hot supper. Hey, Ma’am Hickey, I’ve fetched you a kind of a queer cargo!”
This last remark was addressed to a large, round-faced, motherly-looking woman who had come to the door of the hotel part of the building with her apron over her head.
“What’s that you say, Dave?” she called out loudly and heartily.
“I say I’ve fetched you a kind of a queer cargo. You just come out an’ see if I hain’t.”
He jumped down from his high driver’s seat and flung open the stage door as Ma’am Hickey came over to the edge of the roadway. Reaching into the coach, Dave picked up what appeared to be a round bundle on the back seat, and set it out in the snow with a buffalo robe around it. The robe fell to the ground, and there was revealed to the amazed bystanders a girl of about nine years with big dark eyes that looked calmly and yet appealingly at the staring group. The next moment Dave had set a yellow-haired boy of about five years down beside the girl.
“There you air!” said Dave, the stage-driver. “Got ’commodations for this lady an’ gent, Ma’am Hickey?”
“Well, I’ll make ’commodations for ’em, if I have to turn you out o’ your bed to do it,” said Ma’am Hickey, as she dropped to her knees before the little boy and took him into her arms, saying as she did so:
“Why, bless your heart an’ soul, little feller! I declare if it don’t feel sweet to git a child into my arms once more! An’ whose boy air you, anyhow?”