Old Caravan Days Part 26

"Oh, awful nice! There was a little girl lost, and we got her to her mother again, and Zene and the wagon were separated from us once"--

"Zene has taken good care of you, has he?"

"He didn't have to take care of us!" remonstrated Robert. "And last night when there was a fair, I thought he stuck around more than he was needed: There was the meanest boy that stuck up his hose at movers' children."

Aunt Corinne's brother Tip laughed under his breath.

"You'll not be movers' children much longer. The home is over yonder, only half a day's ride or so."

"Is it a nice place?"

"I think it's a nice place. There's prairie, but there's timber too.

And there's money to be made. You go to sleep now. You'll wake your grandma, and I expect she's tired."

"Yes, sir, I'm going. Is there a garden?"

"There's a good bit of ground for a garden; and there's a planting of young catalpas. Far as the eye can see in one direction, it's prairie. On the other side is woods. The house is better than the old one. I had to build, and I built pretty substantial. Your grandma's growing old. She'll need comforts in her old age, and we must put them around her, my man."

Bobaday thought about this home to which he and his family were to grow as trees grasp the soil. Already it seemed better to him than the one he had left. There would be new playmates, new landscapes, new meadows to run in, new neighbors, new prospects. The home, so distant during the journey that he had scarcely thought about it at all, now seemed to inclose him with its pleasant walls, which the smell of new timbers made pleasant twice over.

Boswell and Johnson, under the carriage, waked by the cautious talk from that sound sleep a hard day's hunts after woods things induces, and perhaps sniffing the presence of their master and the familiar air of home, rose up to shake themselves, and one of them yawned until his jaws creaked.

"It's the dogs," whispered Bobaday.

"We mustn't set them to barking," cautioned Pa Padgett.

"Well, good-night," said the boy, turning on his cus.h.i.+on.

"Good-night. This caravan must move on early in the morning."