Page:While Caroline Was Growing.djvu/353

 the whole trip. He can't lose. He says it's tiresome."

The strange dialogue went on for what might have been an hour. Far ports and foreign streets, full sails and thronged inns, the fountains of paved courts, the market squares of dark and vivid nations, blossomed from the tongue of this chair-bound woman in her farmhouse prison; and from the blind, unhappy voyager came halting, telegraphic phrases: climate and train schedules and over-lavish fees, miles and meals and petty miseries. No sunset had stained her hurried way, no handed flowers from shy street children had sweetened it. And ever and again she returned insistently to the barnyard interests of the Winterpines!

"See here!" she burst out suddenly, "I'll tell you what I'll do! I told J. G. that I wouldn't go another step with him—mascot or no mascot. He wants to go over the Himalayas—to start next week—he has an idea. But if you'll go, I'll take you! What do you say? My guest, of course: it don't cost you a penny."

The woman turned utterly white. Where her