Page:Caroline Lockhart--The Fighting Shepherdess.djvu/183

 various windows as they pressed against it to convince themselves that the sight was not an optical illusion.

The Toomeys had traveled in a stateroom, over Mrs. Toomey's feeble protest, and the best room with bath in one of the best hotels in Chicago was not too good for Mr.Toomey. They had thought to stay three weeks, with reasonable economy, and return with a modest bank balance, but the familiar environment was too much for Toomey, who dropped back into his old way of living as though he never had been out of it, while the new clothes and the brightness of the atmosphere of prosperity after the years of anxiety and poverty drugged Mrs. Toomey's conscience and caution into a profound slumber—the latter to be awakened only when, counting the banknotes in her husband's wallet, she was startled to discover that they had little more than enough to pay their hotel bill and return to Prouty in comfort. If either of them remembered the source from which their present luxurious enjoyment came, neither mentioned it.

The breakfast and service this morning were perfect and Mrs. Toomey sighed contentedly as she crumpled her napkin and reached for the paper.

"There's been a terrible blizzard west of the Mississippi," she murmured from the depths of the Journal.

"I'm glad we've missed a little misery," Toomey replied carelessly. "It'll mean late trains and all the rest of it. We'd better stay over until they're running again on schedule."

Mrs. Toomey ignored, if she heard, the suggestion, and continued:

"It says that the stock, and the sheep in particular, have died like flies on the range, and scores of herders have been frozen."

"There's more herders where they came from."