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

I drive for you as far as our place? It's get-
ting colder every minute. Have you seen the
doctor?"

"Yes. He is coming over to-morrow. But
he says father can't get better; can't get well."
The girl's lip trembled. She looked fixedly up
the bleak street as if she were gathering her
strength to face something, as if she were try-
ing with all her might to grasp a situation which,
no matter how painful, must be met and dealt
with somehow. The wind flapped the skirts of
her heavy coat about her.

Carl did not say anything, but she felt his
sympathy. He, too, was lonely. He was a thin,
frail boy, with brooding dark eyes, very quiet
in all his movements. There was a delicate pallor
in his thin face, and his mouth was too sensitive
for a boy's. The lips had already a little curl
of bitterness and skepticism. The two friends
stood for a few moments on the windy street
corner, not speaking a word, as two travelers,
who have lost their way, sometimes stand and
admit their perplexity in silence. When Carl
turned away he said, "I'll see to your team."
Alexandra went into the store to have her pur-
chases packed in the egg-boxes, and to get warm
before she set out on her long cold drive.

When she looked for Emil, she found him sit-
ting on a step of the staircase that led up to the
clothing and carpet department. He was play-
ing with a little Bohemian girl, Marie Tovesky,
who was tying her handkerchief over the kit-
ten's head for a bonnet. Marie was a stranger
in the country, having come from Omaha with
her mother to visit her uncle, Joe Tovesky. She
was a dark child, with brown curly hair, like a
brunette doll's, a coaxing little red mouth,
and round, yellow-brown eyes. Every one
noticed her eyes; the brown iris had golden
glints that made them look like gold-stone, or,
in softer lights, like that Colorado mineral
called tiger-eye.

The country children thereabouts wore their
dresses to their shoe-tops, but this city child
was dressed in what was then called the "Kate
Greenaway" manner, and her red cashmere