Mary Hope was picking small lumps of dirt out of her hair, which she wore in a pompadour that disclosed a very nice forehead. "I just love a roof with shingles on it," she smiled. "H'm." Tom looked up at the sagging poles with the caked mud showing in the cracks between where the poles had shrunken and warped under the weight. A fresh gust of wind rattled dust into his eyes, and the oldest Swede chortled an abrupt "Ka-hugh!" that set the other six tittering. "Silence! _Shame_ on you!" Mary Hope reproved them sternly, rapping on the kitchen table with a foot rule of some soft wood that blazoned along its length the name of a Pocatello hardware store. "Get to work this instant or I shall be compelled to keep you all in at recess." "You better haze 'em all home at recess, and get where it's warm before you catch your death of cold," Tom advised, giving first aid to his eye with a corner of his white-dotted blue handkerchief. "This ain't fit for cattle, such a day as this." "A north wind like this would blow through anything," Mary Hope loyally defended the shack. "It was quite comfortable yesterday." "I wouldn't send a dog here to school," said Tom. "Can't they dig up any better place than this for you to teach in?" "The parents of these children are paying out of their own pockets to have them taught, as it is." "They'll be paying out of their own pockets to have them planted, if they ain't careful," Tom predicted dryly. "How're you fixed for firewood? Got enough to keep warm on a hot day?" Mary Hope smiled faintly. "Mr. Boyle hauled us a load of sage brush, and the boys chop wood mornings and noons--it's a punishment when they don't behave, or if they miss their lessons. But--the stove doesn't seem to draw very well, in this wind. It smokes more than it throws out heat." She added hastily, "It drew all right yesterday. It's this wind." "What you going to do if this wind keeps up? It's liable to blow for a week or two, this time of year." "Why--we'll manage to get along all right. They'd probably be out playing in it anyway, if they weren't in school." "Oh. And what about you?" Tom looked at her, blinking rapidly with his left eye that was growing bloodshot and watery. "I? Why, I've lived here all my life, and I ought to be used to a little bad weather." "Hunh." Tom shivered in the draught. "So have I lived here all my life; but I'll be darned if I would want to sit in this shack all day, the way the wind whistles through it." "You might do it, though--if it was your only way of earning money," Mary Hope suggested shrewdly. "Well, I might," Tom admitted, "but I sure would stop up a few cracks." "We've hardly got settled yet," said Mary Hope. "I intend to stuff the cracks with rags just as soon as possible. Is your eye still paining? That dirt is miserable stuff to stick in a person's eye. Shall I try and get it out? Yesterday I got some in mine, and I had an awful time."