And then the
balloon went up, a big, six-foot balloon, and with all its fire made
only a pale glow in the sky, and after another hour of hand-shaking,
shoulder-clapping, and asking of questions about health and domestic
matters, Alan went to his cabin.
He looked about the one big room that was his living-room, and it never
had seemed quite so comforting as now. At first he thought it was as he
had left it, for there was his desk where it should be, the big table in
the middle of the room, the same pictures on the walls, his gun-rack
filled with polished weapons, his pipes, the rugs on the floor--and
then, one at a time, he began to observe things that were different. In
place of dark shades there were soft curtains at his windows, and new
covers on his table and the home-made couch in the corner. On his desk
were two pictures in copper-colored frames, one of George Washington and
the other of Abraham Lincoln, and behind them crisscrossed against the
wall just over the top of the desk, were four tiny American flags. They
recalled Alan's mind to the evening aboard the _Nome_ when Mary Standish
had challenged his assertion that he was an Alaskan and not an American.
Only she would have thought of those two pictures and the little flags.
There were flowers in his room, and she had placed them there.
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