"And I practice it," declared the Post Mistress. "Only in this case I can't. Nobody could. What sort of woman is she, anyway? I can't understand her. She's rid of him and the child and the wind and the weather. She's back there where they say it's cool in the summer-time and warm in the winter, where the cold blasts don't blow, and the hot winds don't blister, and still she can't take time to sit down and write a little note to the father of her child." She looked away from the window and Seth to the Professor, who wondered why it was he had never before observed the beauty of her humid eyes. "I can't bear to see him walking up and down," she complained, "waitin' and waitin'. It disgusts you with woman-kind." The wind blew the shutter to with a bang. It flung it open again. Some twigs of a tree outside tapped at the pane. A whistle sounded. Seth turned glad eyes in the direction of the sound. The train! There was the usual bustle. A man brought in a bag of letters, flung it down, sped out and made a flying leap for the train, which was beginning to move on. The Post Mistress busied herself with distributing the mail and Seth walked back and forth, waiting. Presently he came in at the door, stood at the grated window back of which she sorted out the letters and then went out again. After a time he drove slowly by the house in the high blue cart. "Was there anything for him?" asked the Professor. The Post Mistress looked after the cart receding into a cloud of dust blown up by the wind and brushed her fingers across her eyes. "There was nothing for him," she said. CHAPTER XIV. [Illustration] On the winter following Celia's departure, Seth fared ill. It was all he could do to keep warmth in the boy's body and his own, to get food for their nourishment. And as for homesickness! There were nights when he looked at the silver moon, half effaced by wind-blown clouds, and fought back the tears, thinking how that same moon was shining down on home and her. Nights when he fell into very pleasant dreams of that tranquil beauteous and pleasant country where the wind did not blow. Dreams in which he beheld flowers, not ragged wind-torn flowers of a parched and ragged prairie, odorless, colorless flowers and tumbleweeds tossing weirdly over dusty plains, but flowers of his youth, Four o'Clocks, Marguerites and Daffy-Down-Dillies, nodding bloomily on either side of an old brick walk leading from door to gate, Jasmine hanging redolently from lattice, Virginia Creeper and Pumpkin-vine. And oh! A radiant dream! Celia, walking out through vine and flower in all her fresh young beauty to meet him as in the old days, to open wide the door and welcome him. Then as she had done, he waked sobbing, man though he was, but he hushed his sobs for fear of waking the child. Homesickness!