"Cather, Willa - O Pioneers!" - читать интересную книгу автора (Cather Willa Sibert)

men in coarse overcoats, with their long caps
pulled down to their noses. Some of them had
brought their wives to town, and now and then
a red or a plaid shawl flashed out of one store
into the shelter of another. At the hitch-bars
along the street a few heavy work-horses, har-
nessed to farm wagons, shivered under their
blankets. About the station everything was
quiet, for there would not be another train in
until night.

On the sidewalk in front of one of the stores
sat a little Swede boy, crying bitterly. He was
about five years old. His black cloth coat was
much too big for him and made him look like
a little old man. His shrunken brown flannel
dress had been washed many times and left a
long stretch of stocking between the hem of his
skirt and the tops of his clumsy, copper-toed
shoes. His cap was pulled down over his ears;
his nose and his chubby cheeks were chapped
and red with cold. He cried quietly, and the
few people who hurried by did not notice him.
He was afraid to stop any one, afraid to go into
the store and ask for help, so he sat wringing his
long sleeves and looking up a telegraph pole
beside him, whimpering, "My kitten, oh, my
kitten! Her will fweeze!" At the top of the
pole crouched a shivering gray kitten, mewing
faintly and clinging desperately to the wood
with her claws. The boy had been left at the
store while his sister went to the doctor's office,
and in her absence a dog had chased his kit-
ten up the pole. The little creature had never
been so high before, and she was too frightened
to move. Her master was sunk in despair. He
was a little country boy, and this village was to
him a very strange and perplexing place, where
people wore fine clothes and had hard hearts.
He always felt shy and awkward here, and
wanted to hide behind things for fear some one
might laugh at him. Just now, he was too un-
happy to care who laughed. At last he seemed
to see a ray of hope: his sister was coming, and
he got up and ran toward her in his heavy
shoes.

His sister was a tall, strong girl, and she
walked rapidly and resolutely, as if she knew
exactly where she was going and what she was