Chapter: AFTER Lena came to Black Hawk I often met her downtown, where she would be
matching sewing silk or buying "findings" for Mrs. Thomas. If I happened
to walk home with her, she told me all about the dresses she was helping
to make, or about what she saw and heard when she was with Tiny Soderball
at the hotel on Saturday nights.

The Boys' Home was the best hotel on our branch of the Burlington, and all
the commercial travelers in that territory tried to get into Black Hawk
for Sunday. They used to assemble in the parlor after supper on Saturday
nights. Marshall Field's man, Anson Kirkpatrick, played the piano and sang
all the latest sentimental songs. After Tiny had helped the cook wash the
dishes, she and Lena sat on the other side of the double doors between the
parlor and the dining-room, listening to the music and giggling at the
jokes and stories. Lena often said she hoped I would be a traveling man
when I grew up. They had a gay life of it; nothing to do but ride about on
trains all day and go to theaters when they were in big cities. Behind the
hotel there was an old store building, where the salesmen opened their big
trunks and spread out their samples on the counters. The Black Hawk
merchants went to look at these things and order goods, and Mrs. Thomas,
though she was "retail trade," was permitted to see them and to "get
ideas." They were all generous, these traveling men; they gave Tiny
Soderball handkerchiefs and gloves and ribbons and striped stockings, and
so many bottles of perfume and cakes of scented soap that she bestowed
some of them on Lena.

One afternoon in the week before Christmas I came upon Lena and her funny,
square-headed little brother Chris, standing before the drug-store, gazing
in at the wax dolls and blocks and Noah's arks arranged in the frosty show
window. The boy had come to town with a neighbor to do his Christmas
shopping, for he had money of his own this year. He was only twelve, but
that winter he had got the job of sweeping out the Norwegian church and
making the fire in it every Sunday morning. A cold job it must have been,
too!

We went into Duckford's dry-goods store, and Chris unwrapped all his
presents and showed them to me--something for each of the six younger than
himself, even a rubber pig for the baby. Lena had given him one of Tiny
Soderball's bottles of perfume for his mother, and he thought he would get
some handkerchiefs to go with it. They were cheap, and he had n't much
money left. We found a tableful of handkerchiefs spread out for view at
Duckford's. Chris wanted those with initial letters in the corner, because
he had never seen any before. He studied them seriously, while Lena looked
over his shoulder, telling him she thought the red letters would hold
their color best. He seemed so perplexed that I thought perhaps he had n't
enough money, after all. Presently he said gravely,--

"Sister, you know mother's name is Berthe. I don't know if I ought to get
B for Berthe, or M for Mother."

Lena patted his bristly head. "I'd get the B, Chrissy. It will please her
for you to think about her name. Nobody ever calls her by it now."

That satisfied him. His face cleared at once, and he took three reds and
three blues. When the neighbor came in to say that it was time to start,
Lena wound Chris's comforter about his neck and turned up his jacket
collar--he had no overcoat--and we watched him climb into the wagon and
start on his long, cold drive. As we walked together up the windy street,
Lena wiped her eyes with the back of her woolen glove. "I get awful
homesick for them, all the same," she murmured, as if she were answering
some remembered reproach.

 Jim frequently meets Lena downtown, and they used to walk home together and talk. Lena tells him about a hotel called the Boys' Home where she and Tiny Soderball would listen to the entertainment being put on for traveling salesmen. The traveling men would give Tiny gifts. One day Jim meets Lena and her young brother Chris going Christmas shopping. Chris shows all the presents he got for his family members and tries to decide which handkerchief to get his mother. After Chris goes back home, Lena tears up a little bit and confesses how homesick she gets.

