The first winter weather had come when, by the calendar, winter should have been nearly over. Hazel had so long enjoyed the mild air that she had begun to believe nothing else was possible in Alabama. Now she was to learn that in a warm climate one most keenly feels the cold. “I wonder if Mother is freezing up in Boston,” she mused, as she and Granny together did the housework. “She goes out to work a good deal now. I hope she isn’t taking cold.” “Don’t borrow trouble, honey.” “But if she should take cold Charity would take care of her. Charity gets her supper sometimes now, Mother says, when she’s tired. And then Mother reads to her out of the Blue Fairy Book. I couldn’t bring many books, Granny, in just one little trunk, but I do wish I could read to you in the Blue Fairy Book. You would like it so much.” “Then I done rob Charity of her good time.” “But in Boston,” Hazel explained, “you have a library where you can get any book in the world.” “Telephone for it, I suppose,” said Granny sceptically. “Yes,” answered Hazel absently. “It will be too cold for Scip to come to play house this afternoon,” the little girl declared somewhat petulantly as they sat at dinner after a morning indoors; “his father’s sure to be cross. But I’ll go up, Granny, because I never miss, you know.” She put on her hat and her warm coat and climbed the little hill. The wind was high, but crouched in her enclosure, Hazel scarcely felt it. But she could hear it though, soughing through the pines--she believed the trees were never silent. To-day their singing leaves trumpeted the winter and called for action. “I believe I’ll go to the top of the hill,” she said to herself. “Scip isn’t coming and it’s a good day to explore.” She climbed up the hillside, striking once with her trusty stick at a stray pig, and soon reached the top. Below on one side was her home and the cabins with which she was familiar; on the other side stretched an unknown country, a land where she had been told the white folks lived. “I’ll go just a little further,” Hazel decided. The cold air made her feel like exercising. She was in much better health than when she had come to Alabama; in better health, her mother would have seen, than she had ever been in her life. The tingling air gave her courage, and she raced unconcernedly past cows and pigs down the hill on the other side. It seemed remarkably like the side she had left. There were the same log cabins, the same stretches of land filled with dry cotton stalks, the same hens, the same hogs. If she came upon a clapboarded house it was devoid of paint. She met an occasional lean, ragged white child, dull of complexion, who stared at her but had no word of greeting. But the cold kept the people indoors.