Alas, it was only an "effect"! The
red-hot parlor stove smoked abominably, the pipe carried other smoke
out through the hawmow window, only to let it blow back again. Chill
cross-draughts whistled in from cracks too numerous to be stopped up,
and the miserable Van Kamps could only cough and shiver, and envy the
Tutts and the driver, non-combatants who had been fed two hours
before.
Up in the second floor suite there was a roaring fire in the big
fireplace, but there was a chill in the room that no mere fire could
drive away--the chill of absolute emptiness.
A man can outlive hardships that would kill a woman, but a woman can
endure discomforts that would drive a man crazy.
Mr. Ellsworth went out to hunt up Uncle Billy, with an especial solace
in mind. The landlord was not in the house, but the yellow gleam of a
lantern revealed his presence in the woodshed, and Mr. Ellsworth
stepped in upon him just as he was pouring something yellow and clear
into a tumbler from a big jug that he had just taken from under the
flooring.
"How much do you want for that jug and its contents?" he asked, with a
sigh of gratitude that this supply had been overlooked.
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