The following day was memorable to us, as I have hinted, for it revealed to us the enterprise of a modern free and enlightened press. Bill said no husband of her's should ever take assignments to interview people if that was the way of it. But the day after that was memorable, to me especially. The hue and cry was gone, our little happenings were forgotten and some other home was besieged by the reporters. I had started out on the frozen snow to go to the post-office with some manuscript when I met Beppo and Ben with the sled, bound for a certain slope which they credited with famous tobogganing virtues. They greeted me as if I were one of them; seriously they turned their faces up to mine as they expounded their plans. I was aware of an inward fluttering of pride, for it is no small matter to win the confidence of small children. I went with them towards the hill they spoke of. It lay at the end of an avenue of superb trees whose black, leafless twigs bore their frosting of snow like strings of jewels in the glittering air. The wind blew up the avenue keenly in our faces as we trudged. And then, where the trees ended, the hill fell away at our feet, the valley lay far and wide, the steel-blue river winding below, and in the distance the domes and towers of the Metropolis.
"Look!" I said, stooping down to them and pointing. "Do you know what that is?" They nodded and looked at me smiling. "N'York," they whispered.
"When is father coming home?" I asked.
"Soon," said Beppo. "Ma was cryin' this morning."
"Why," I said in astonishment. "And does she cry when he comes home?"
"Oh, no," he replied slowly. "She cheers up when he comes home. It's the storm, I guess. When the wind blows she cries a good bit."
And the next moment they were flying, face forward, down the hill.
I was roused from the study into which this plunged me by Miss Fraenkel's interest in the catastrophe. As I bought my stamps and posted my letters she continued to discuss its possibilities.
"What a story it would make!" she observed. "A thing like that coming down here, of all places, and nobody expecting it. Like Sherlock Holmes."