Page:While Caroline Was Growing.djvu/113

 hair all tossed about, his face drawn in misery, even in his heavy sleep, a young man sat before a table, half lying on it, one hand on a soiled plate still grasping a piece of bread.

"Is he sick?" whispered Caroline.

"N—no, I wouldn't say sick, exactly, but I guess he'd be almost as well off if he was," said the woman. "It would take his mind off. He's had a lot of trouble."

The man scowled in his sleep and clenched his hand, so that the bread crumbled in it.

"And so I won the prize," he muttered, "just as I told her I would. Did I have any pull? Was there any favoritism? No—you know it as well as I do—it was good work won that prize!"

"Was it a bridge prize?" Caroline inquired maturely. The woman stared.

"A bridge prize?" she repeated vaguely. "Why, no, I guess not. It was for writing a story for one of those magazines. He won a thousand dollars."

The man opened his eyes suddenly.

"And if you don't believe it," he said, still