"He cries for food, mademoiselle," said the woman simply. "He has eaten
nothing since we left the Grand Gap yesterday at three o'clock; except
that the good conductor gave us a drink of coffee this morning. And his
mother has nothing to give her poor Pierre to eat. It is sad, is it not?"




CHAPTER VI

A SERIOUS PROBLEM


The chums from Tillbury looked at each other in awed amazement. Nothing
just like this had ever come to their knowledge before. The healthy
desire of a vigorous appetite for food was one thing; but this child's
whimpering need and its mother's patient endurance of her own lack of
food for nearly twenty-four hours, shook the two girls greatly.

"Why, the poor little fellow!" gasped Nan, and sank to her knees to place
her cheek against the pale one of the little French boy.

"They--they're starving!" choked Bess Harley.

The woman seemed astonished by the emotion displayed by these two
schoolgirls. She looked from Nan to Bess in rather a frightened way.

"Monsieur, the conductor, say it cannot ver' well be help'," she
murmured. "It is the snow; it haf overtaken us."