The girl laughed then, helplessly, half amused, half vexed. “Lowell isn’t Air Force, he’s a construction worker, we were married back home in Dakota and this one”—she pointed to the older child—“was born before I ever got here. I stepped off the plane, my husband had never seen him, he was so excited—–”

“Oh, well, make nothing of it,” Bridie said, airily, as though it had been the girl who was in error. “You’re here and happy, and that’s what counts.” She looked sharply at the young woman. “Two, and another one coming. Three’s a nice number, four is better, and Alaska wants population, those ninnies in Washington keep saying there aren’t enough of us. Why, look at Oregon when it came in, and Nebraska and New Mexico and California even, not to speak of that Texas—why, twenty-eight territories with a lot less population than us got statehood but here we are—–”

Bridie was off, riding her favorite subject full-tilt. The young wife thought of her marketing and her household tasks as she nodded politely, her glance distrait. The boy shook his mother’s hand impatiently, the child in the cart began to whimper. Bridie broke off abruptly. “And who’s a bigger ninny than me, keeping these angels here in the cold?”

A car came to a stop at the curb. Another, just behind it, halted with a screech. Windows were lowered, there was hallooing and beckoning, a girl at the wheel of the first car stuck her head out of the window. A black-eyed blonde in a white fur parka, its white wolf hood dramatically framing her face.

“Bridie! We called for you at the Ice Palace. Waited and waited and Ott went up to your room. You said you’d be in the lobby at eleven.”

“Did I now, Chris! Oh, the pity of it!” The feet, in the smart black suède pumps, made nothing of the snowy distance between sidewalk and car. “I had an errand, very particular it was, and I made sure you’d pick me up here at the corner.” She waved farewell to the young wife and the two children. “My love to Augie, now, and don’t forget,” she called, blithely.

Ott Decker emerged from the first car, he scurried round to hand Bridie in. “Oh, now, Bridie, everybody knows you can’t sit still long enough to be called for. Ants in your pants.”

“Mind your tongue!” Bridie commanded, teetering toward the door.

The front window of the second car was lowered. Czar Kennedy’s silver head was poked out. Peering just behind it was Oscar Bogard, Mayor of Baranof.

“Someday you’ll be standing here on the corner frozen stiff,” the Mayor shouted, “and somebody’ll put a dime in your mouth thinking you’re a parking meter.”

“It won’t be you,” retorted Bridie. “You’re too stingy to meter-park, you got diplomatic immunity.” Her laughter whooped out on the icy morning air.

Czar Kennedy’s benevolent face, his gentle voice, chided her.

“Come on right in here where you belong, Bridie, with the old sourdoughs. You can have the whole back seat to yourself, like the queen you are.”