Read "Where the Young Child Was" by Marie Conway Oemler online for free on Textopian. Full text with search, annotations, highlights, and AI-powered reading aids.
"Ain't some folks lucky? " Mahany spoke to Captain Austin Hoban, tramping up and down the desolate junction platform, and waved a huge mittened paw toward the private car glowing with warm light through the snowy dusk. "Look at them! Nothin' on earth to trouble 'em. _They_ ain't jackrabbited from pillar to Post for heaven knows why," grumbled the grizzled old sergeant bitterly. "_They_ ain't got to dry-nurse a lot of kid rookies that ought to be home hangin' up stockin's for their poppas an' mommas to fill on the sly, 'stead of bein' took out on a Christmas Eve for to be makin' soldiers of, which I misdoubt heaven ever meant the likes of such _for_."
He was taking an offensively raw and youthful draft out to a Northwest Post; Hoban, returning to that same Post after leave of absence, had fallen in with him at this transfer point. They were waiting with such patience as they possessed for the made-up train -- engine, box-car, coach of foreign miners, extra car for the soldiers, and now this superfine private car, "Andrassah" -- to start. Still grumbling, for it was piercingly cold, Mahany went back to his charges.