Skippy’s young heart was bursting with sympathy. Wrapped up in his own and his father’s concerns he had been vaguely conscious of his neighbors, the Duffys of the _Dinky O. Cross_. Squatters like himself, he had been aware that they came and went, but that was all. Now they became suddenly real and vivid to him—the Duffys, father and mother, and their two children, minus the father now.