Transcriber's Notes

Original spellings and punctuation have been retained except as noted.
Nelly and Nellie were both used, standardized to Nelly.
Crestfallen and crest-fallen are both used, doorstep and door-step are both used. They have been retained.
Typographical errors in original have been marked with mouse-hover pop-up.

All that morning Rob fished and Nelly stuck grasshoppers on the hook for him.
FRONTISPIECE. See page 204.

The Beacon Hill Bookshelf

Nelly's Silver Mine

A Story of Colorado Life

By

Helen Hunt Jackson

With Illustrations in Color by
Harriet Roosevelt Richards

Boston
Little, Brown, and Company
1926

Copyright, 1878,
By Roberts Brothers
Copyright, 1906, 1920,
By William S. Jackson.
Copyright, 1910,
By Little, Brown, and Company.

CONTENTS

ILLUSTRATIONS

NELLY'S SILVER MINE

CHAPTER I

CHRISTMAS-DAY IN NELLY'S NEW-ENGLAND HOME

It was Christmas morning; and Nelly March and her brother Rob were lying wide awake in their beds, wondering if it would do for them to get up and look in their stockings to see what Santa Claus had brought them. Nelly and Rob were twins; but you would never have thought so, when you looked at them, for Nelly was half a head taller than Rob, and a good deal heavier. She had always been well; but Rob had always been a delicate child. He was ill now with a bad sore throat, and had been shut up in the house for ten days. This was the reason that he and Nelly were in bed at six o'clock this Christmas morning, instead of scampering all about the house, and waking everybody up with their shouts of delight over their presents. When they went to bed the night before, Mrs. March had said: "Now, Rob, you must promise me not to get out of bed till it is broad daylight, and the house is thoroughly warm. You will certainly take cold, if you get up in the cold room."

"Mamma," said Nelly, "I needn't stay in bed just because Rob has to, need I? I can take his presents out of the stocking, and carry them to him."

"You shan't, either," said Rob, fretfully. "I want to take them out myself; and you're real mean not to wait for me, Nell. 'Tisn't half so much fun for just one. Shan't she stay in bed too, mamma, as long as I have to?"

Mrs. March looked at Nelly, and smiled. She knew Nelly had not thought Rob would care any thing about her getting up first, or she would never have proposed it. Nelly was always ready to give up to Rob, much more so than was for his good.

"Nelly can do as she pleases, Rob," she answered. "I don't think it would be fair for me to compel her to stay in bed because you have a sore throat: do you?"

But Rob did not answer. He was not a very generous boy, and all he was thinking of now was his own pleasure.

"Say, Nell," he cried, "you won't get up, will you, till I can? Don't: I'll think you're real unkind if you do."

"No, no, Rob," said Nelly. "Indeed I won't. I don't care. It will be all the longer to think about it, and that's almost the best part of it." And Nelly threw her arms around Rob's neck and kissed him.

"It's too bad, you darling," she said, "you have to be sick on Christmas-day. I won't have any pudding, either, if you don't want me to."

Mrs. March was an Englishwoman, and had lived in England till she was married, and she always had on Christmas-day a real English plum-pudding with brandy turned over it, and set on fire just before the pudding was brought to the table, so that when it came in the blue and red and yellow flames were all blazing up high over it, and the waitress had to turn her head away not to breathe the heat from the flames.

You would have thought it would have made Rob ashamed to have Nelly propose to go without pudding because he could not eat any, but I don't think it did. All he said was,—

"Don't be a goose, Nell. That's quite different."

Just before they went to sleep, Sarah, the cook, went past their door, and Nelly called to her:—

"Sarah, mamma says we mustn't get up to-morrow morning till the house is very warm. Couldn't you get up very early and start the furnace fire?"

"Why, yes, Miss Nelly, I can do that easy enough, sure; but where'll you be sleeping?"

"Just where we always do, Sarah," replied Nelly, much surprised at this question.

"Well, miss, I'll be up long before light and get the house as warm as toast by the time you can see to tell the toes from the heels of your stockings," said Sarah. "Good-night, Miss Nelly. Good-night, Master Rob."

"What could she have meant asking where we'd be sleeping?" said Rob.

"I'm sure I don't know," said Nelly; "it's very queer. We've never slept anywhere but in these two beds since we were babies. I don't know what's got into her head. It's the queerest thing I ever knew. I guess she was sleepy," and in a few moments both the children were fast asleep.

Rob was the first to wake up. It was not much past midnight.

"Nelly," he whispered. No answer.

Twice he called: still no answer. There was not a sound to be heard except the loud ticking of the high clock at the head of the stairs. Presently there came a rustle and quick low steps, and his mother stood by his bed.

"What do you want, my dear little boy?" she said. "Is your throat worse?"

"No; isn't it time to get up?" said Rob. "Hasn't Sarah made the fire?"

"Oh, mercy!" exclaimed Mrs. March. "Is that all? Why Rob! it isn't anywhere near morning. You must go to sleep again, child; it is a terribly cold night," and she tucked the bed-clothes tight around him, and ran back to her own room.

"I don't care," said Rob. "I'll just stay awake. I don't believe it'll be very long;" but before he knew it he was fast asleep again. The next time he waked, it had begun to be light, or rather a little less dark. He could see the outline of the window at the foot of his bed, and he could see Nelly's bedstead, which was on the opposite side of the room.

"Nelly," he called again.

"I'm awake," said Nelly.

"Why didn't you speak?" said Rob.

"I was thinking," replied Nelly. "Sarah hasn't gone down yet."

"Pshaw," said Rob, "she must have. She said she'd go long before light. She went before you were awake."

"It's awful cold," whispered Nelly; "I can't keep even my hands out of bed. I'm going to jump up and see if any hot air comes in at the register." So saying, she jumped out of bed, ran to the register, and held her hands above it.

"Cold as Greenland, Rob," she said, "Sarah can't have made the fire. I don't believe she is up."

"Oh, dear," said Rob, "every thing all goes wrong when I'm sick. I think it's too mean I have to be the sick one just because we're twins. I heard a lady say once to mamma,—she didn't think I heard but I did,—'Weren't you very sorry, Mrs. March, to have twins? You know they can't ever both be strong. Your Rob, now, he looks very sickly.' Civil, that was, to mamma, wasn't it? I was so mad I could have flung my ball at her old wise head. But I think it must be true, because mamma answered her real gentle, but with her voice all trembly, and she said, 'Yes, I know that is usually said to be so; but we hope to prove to the contrary. Rob grows stronger every year, and he and his sister take so much comfort together, I can never regret that they were born twins.' But I do: I think it's a shame to make a fellow sick all his life that way. I say, Nell, I don't believe you'd mind it half so much as I do. Girls are different from boys. I think it would have been better for you to be the sick one than me. Don't you? Say, Nell!"

This was a hard question for poor Nelly.

"Oh, Rob!" she said, "I don't want to be selfish about it. I'd be willing to take turns and be sick half the times; or some more than half,—I guess three-quarters: but I think you ought to have a little."

"But don't you see, Nell, it can't be that way," interrupted Rob; "it can't be that way with twins. It's got to be one sick one and one strong one. That's what that lady said, and mamma said she'd heard so too; and I think it's just as mean as any thing. They might have let us be born as much as three days apart, or a week: that wouldn't have made any difference in the fun; we could have played just as well, and, besides, we'd have had two birthdays to keep then, don't you see?"

"I don't think that would be so nice, Rob," said Nelly, "as to have one together. That would be like my getting up now, before you do, and having my stocking all to myself, and you didn't want me to do that."

"Pshaw, Nell," replied Rob, impatiently as before: "that's quite different; but girls never see things."

Nelly laughed out loud. "I don't know why: we have as many eyes as boys have. I see lots more things in the woods than you do, always."

"Oh, not that sort of things," answered Rob; "not that kind of seeing; not with your eyes: I mean to see with your—well, I don't know what it is you see with, the kind I mean; but don't you know mamma often says to papa about something that's got to be done, 'don't you see? don't you see?' and she doesn't mean that he is to look with his eyes: that's the kind I mean. Now where is that Sarah?" he exclaimed suddenly, sitting bolt upright in bed in his excitement. "It's as cold as out-doors here, and there isn't a creature stirring in the house, and it's broad daylight."

"Oh, Rob, do lie down and cover yourself up," cried Nelly. "You're a naughty boy, and you'll have another sore throat as sure's you're alive. It isn't broad daylight nor any thing like it. I can't but just see the stockings."

"Can't but just see them!" said Rob. "Didn't I tell you girls couldn't see any thing? Why, I can see them just as plain, just as plain as if I was in 'em! Ain't they big, Nell? I know what's in yours, for one thing."

"Oh, Rob! do you? Tell me!" exclaimed Nell.

"I can't," replied Rob. "I promised mamma I wouldn't. But it's something you've wanted awfully."

"A doll, Rob! oh, is it a doll with eyes that can shut? oh, say, Rob!" pleaded Nelly. "It's long past the time I ought to have had it, if you hadn't been sick: you might tell me. I'll tell you what one of your things is if you will."

"I don't want to know, Nell," replied Rob, "and you needn't tease me, for I'll never tell you: not if they lie abed in this house all day. Dear me! where can Sarah be? I'm going to call mamma."

"You can't make her hear, Rob," answered Nelly. "They shut the doors ever so long ago. They were talking about something they didn't want us to hear."

"How do you know?" said Rob.

"Because I heard some of what they said, and I coughed so that they might know I was awake," replied Nelly. "Oh, Rob, it is awful!" and Nelly began to sob.

"What's awful? what is it, Nell? Tell me, can't you?" said Rob, in an excited tone.

"No, Rob I'm not going to tell you any thing about it," replied Nelly. "It wouldn't be fair, because they didn't want us to know. It'll be time enough when it comes."

"When what comes?" shouted Rob, thoroughly roused now. "I do say, Nell March, you're enough to try a saint. What did you tell me any thing about it for? I'll tell mamma the minute she comes in, and tell her you listened. Oh, shame, shame, shame on a listener!"

"Rob, you're just as mean as you can be," cried Nelly. "I didn't listen, and mamma knows very well I wouldn't do such a thing. Of course I couldn't help hearing when both doors were open, and I coughed out loud as soon as I thought about it that most likely they didn't mean we should know any thing about it. I heard papa say something about the children, and mamma said, 'we won't tell them till it is all settled,' and then I gave a great big cough, and she got up and shut both the doors; so now, Rob, you see I wasn't a listener. I wouldn't listen for any thing: mamma said once it was the very meanest kind of a lie in the whole world! Mamma knows I wouldn't do it, and you can just tell her what you like, you old hateful boy."

This was a very unhappy sort of talk for Christmas morning, was it not? But both Rob and Nelly were tired and cold, and their patience was all worn out. It really was a hard trial for two children only twelve years old to have to lie still in bed, hour after hour, Christmas morning, waiting for their presents; it grew slowly lighter and lighter; each moment they could see the big stockings plainer and plainer; they hung on the outside of the closet door on two big hooks, where were usually hung the children's school hats. One stocking was gray, and one was white. I must tell you about these stockings, for they were very droll. They were larger than the largest boots you ever saw, and would reach the whole length of a man's leg, way above his knee, as far up as they could go. They belonged to the children's grandfather March. He was one of the queerest old gentlemen that ever was known, I think. He lived in a city a great many miles away from the village where Mr. and Mrs. March lived, but he used to spend his winters with them. About six weeks before he arrived, big boxes used to begin to come. There was no railroad to this village: every thing had to come on coaches or big luggage wagons. Early in November, old Mr. March's boxes always began to arrive at his son's house. When Rob and Nelly saw Mr. Earle's big express wagon drive up to the back gate, they always exclaimed, "Oh, there are grandpa's things coming!" and they would run out to see them unloaded. You would have thought that old Mr. March supposed there was nothing to eat in all the village, to see what quantities of food he sent up. But the most peculiar thing about it was that he sent such queer things. He was as queer about his food as he was about every thing else, and he did not eat the things other people ate. For instance, he never ate butter; he ate fresh olive oil on everything; and he had a notion that no olive oil was brought to this country to sell which was fit to eat. He had an intimate friend who was an old sea captain, and used to sail to Smyrna; this sea captain used to bring over for him large boxes of bottles of olive oil every spring and autumn; and two or three of these boxes he would use up in the course of the winter. He never used more than half of the oil in a bottle: after it had been opened a few days, he did not like it; he would smell it very carefully each day, and, by the third or fourth day, he would shove the bottle from him, and say, "Bah! throw the stuff away! throw it away! it isn't fit to eat!" Mrs. March had great trouble in disposing of these half bottles of oil; everybody in the neighborhood took them, and very glad people were to get them too, for the oil was delicious; but there were enough for two or three villages of the size of Mayfield. These sweet-oil boxes had curious letters on them in scarlet and blue, and the bottles were all rolled up in a sort of shining silver paper, which Rob and Nelly used to keep to cover boxes with. It was very pretty, so they were always glad when they saw a big pile of the olive-oil boxes. Then there were also boxes full of bottles of pepper-sauce; this came in big black bottles, and the little peppers showed red through the glass; the smallest drop of this pepper-sauce made your mouth burn like fire, but this queer old gentleman used to pour it over every thing he ate. The big bottle of pepper-sauce and the big bottle of olive oil were always put by his plate, and he poured first from one and then from the other, until the food on his plate was nearly swimming in the strange mixture. Salt fish was another of his favorite dishes, and he brought up every autumn huge piles of them. They came in flat packages, tied up with coarse cord; when Mr. Earle threw them down to the ground from the top of his wagon a strong and disagreeable odor rose in the air, and Rob and Nelly used to exclaim, "Groans for the salt fish! groans for the salt fish! Why didn't you lose it off the wagon, Mr. Earle?"

"It wouldn't have made any odds, miss," Mr. Earle used to reply. "The old gentleman'd have made me go back for more." Besides the salt fish, there were little kegs full of what are called "tongues and sounds," put up in salt brine; these are the tongues and the intestines of fish; there were also jars of oysters and of clams, and a barrel of the sort of bread sailors eat at sea, which is called hard-tack. Now, after hearing about the extraordinary food this old gentleman used to bring for his own use, you will be prepared to believe what I have to tell you about his big stockings. He had just as queer notions about his bed and all his arrangements for sleeping, as he had about his food. No woman was ever allowed to make his bed. He always made it himself. Except in the very hottest weather, he would not have any sheets on it, only the very finest of flannel blankets, a great many of them; and he never wore any night-gown; he believed they were very unwholesome things.

"Why don't animals put on night-gowns to sleep in?" he used to say; one might very well have replied to him, "Animals don't crawl in between blankets either, and if you are going to be simply an animal, you must go without any clothes day and night both." However, he was a very irritable old gentleman, and nobody ever argued with him about any thing. Mr. and Mrs. March let him do in all ways exactly as he liked, and never contradicted him, for he loved them very much, in his way, and was very good to them.

Of all his queer ways and queer things, I think these big stockings were the queerest. As I said, he never wore any night-gown in bed, but he was over seventy years old, and, in spite of all his theories, his feet and legs would sometimes get cold: so he went to a tailor and got an exact pattern of a tight-fitting leg to a pair of trousers; then he took this to a woman who knit stockings to sell, and he unrolled his leg pattern before her, and said:—

"Do you see that leg, ma'am? Can you knit a stocking leg that shape and length?"

The woman did not know what to make of him.

"Why, sir," said she, "you'd never want a stocking-leg that long?"

"I didn't ask you what I wanted, ma'am," growled the old gentleman, "I asked you what you could do. Can you knit a stocking-leg that length and shape?"

"Why, yes, sir, I suppose I can," she replied, much cowed by his fierce manner.

"Well, then, knit me six pairs, three gray and three white. There's the pattern for the foot," and he threw down an old sock of his on the table, and was striding away.

The woman followed him.

"But, sir," she said timidly, "I couldn't knit these for the price of ordinary stockings. I'm afraid you wouldn't be willing to pay what they would cost. It would be like knitting a pair of pantaloons, sir,—indeed it would."

Old Mr. March always carried a big gold-headed cane; and, when he was angry, he lifted it from the ground and shook the gold knob as fast as he could right in people's faces. He lifted it now, and shook the gold knob so close in the woman's face, that she retreated rapidly toward the door.

"I didn't say any thing about money: did I, ma'am? Knit those stockings: I don't care what they cost," he cried.

"But I thought," she interrupted.

"I didn't ask you to think, did I?" said Mr. March, speaking louder and louder. "You'll never earn any money thinking. Knit those stockings, ma'am, and the sooner the better," and the old gentleman walked out of the house muttering.

"Dear me, what a very hasty old gentleman!" said the woman to herself. "I'll go over and ask Mrs. March, and make sure it's all right." So the next day she went to see Mrs. March, who explained to her all the old gentleman's whims about sleeping, and that he was quite willing and able to pay whatever the queer stockings would cost. In a very few weeks, the stockings were all done; and the old gentleman was so pleased with them that he gave the woman an extra five-dollar bill, besides the sum she had charged for knitting them. And this was the way that there came to be hanging up in Nelly's and Rob's chamber two such huge stockings on this Christmas morning of which I am telling you. They were splendid stockings for Christmas stockings! It did really seem as if you never would get to the bottom of them. The children used to lay them down on the floor, and run around them, and pull out thing after thing. Mrs. March sometimes wished they were not quite so large: it took a great deal to fill them: but, after having once used them, she had not the heart to go back to the ordinary-sized stocking, for it would have been such a disappointment to the children. She used them, first, one Christmas when Nelly's chief present was a big doll about two feet and a half tall, which wore real baby clothes like a live baby. This was so big it could not go into a common stocking, and Mrs. March happened then to think of her father's. The old gentleman was delighted to have them used for the purpose, and stood by laughing hard, while Mrs. March put the things in.

"Ha! ha!" he said, "the old stockings are good for more than one thing: aren't they?"

But we are leaving Nelly and Rob a long time in bed waiting for their Christmas presents. It grew lighter and lighter, and still there was no sound in the house, and the room grew no warmer. Rob was so thoroughly cross that he lay back on his pillow, with his eyes shut and his lips pouting out, and would not speak a word. In vain Nelly tried to comfort him, or to interest him. He would not speak. Even Nelly's patience was nearly worn out. At last the door of their mother's room opened, and she came out in her warm red wrapper.

"Why, you dear patient little children!" she exclaimed; "are you in bed yet? this is too bad. What does make your room so cold! Why, bless me!" she exclaimed, going to the register, "no heat is coming up here; what does this mean?"

"I don't think Sarah has gone down yet: I've been awake a long time, mamma," said Nelly.

"A thousand years, it is," exclaimed Rob, "or more, that we've been lying awake here waiting: Sarah's the meanest girl alive."

"Hush, hush, Rob!" said Mrs. March. "Don't speak so. Perhaps she is ill. I will go and see. But you may have your presents on the bed;" and, going to the closet, she took down first the gray stocking, which was for Rob, and carried it and laid it on his bed. Then she carried the white one, and laid it on Nelly's bed.

"Oh, goody, goody!" they both cried at once. "You're real good, mamma;" and in one second more all four of the little arms were plunging into the depths of the big stockings.

"You've earned your presents this time," said Mrs. March, as she pinned warm blankets round the children's shoulders. "I think you are really very brave little children to be quiet so many hours. It is after eight o'clock. I am afraid Sarah is ill."

Then she went upstairs and the children heard her knocking at Sarah's door, and calling, "Sarah! Sarah!" Presently she came down very quickly, and went into her room; in a few minutes, she went back again, and Mr. March went with her. Then the children heard more knocking, and their papa calling very loud, "Sarah! Sarah! open the door this moment." Then came a loud crash.

"Papa's smashed the door in," said Rob. "Good enough for her, lazy old thing, to sleep so Christmas morning! I hope mamma won't give her any present." Nelly did not speak. She had scarcely heard the knocking or the calls: she was so absorbed in looking at her new doll,—a wax doll with eyes that could open and shut. To have such a doll as this had been the great desire of Nelly's heart for years. There was also a beautiful little leather trunk full of clothes for the doll, and four little band-boxes, each with a hat or bonnet in it. There was a bedstead for her to sleep in, and a pretty red arm-chair for her to sit in, and a play piano, which could make a little real music. Then there were four beautiful new books, and ever so many pretty little paper boxes with different sorts of candy in them: all white candy; Mrs. March never gave her children any colored candies.

Rob had a beautiful kaleidoscope, mounted with a handle to turn it round by; it was about as long as Nelly's doll, and as he drew it out he couldn't imagine what it was. Then he had a geographical globe, and a paint-box, and four new volumes of Mayne Reid's stories, and the same number of boxes of candy which Nelly had.

You never saw two happier children than Rob and Nelly were for the next half-hour. They forgot all about the cold, about Sarah, and about having had to wait so long. For half an hour, all that was to be heard in the room were exclamations from one to the other, such as:—

"Oh, Nell! see this picture!"

"Oh, Rob! look at this lovely bonnet!"

"Nell, this is the splendidest one of all."

"This doll is bigger than Mary Pratt's: I know it is. Oh, Rob! don't you suppose it must have cost a lot of money?"

At last Mrs. March came back into their room, looking very much annoyed.

"Well, children," she said, "we're going to have a droll sort of Christmas. Sarah is so fast asleep we can't wake her up, and your papa thinks she must be drunk. We shall have to cook our Christmas dinner ourselves. How will you like that?"

"Oh, splendid, mamma, splendid! Let us get right up now," cried both the children, eagerly laying down their playthings.

"No," said Mrs. March. "Rob must not get up yet: it is too cold; but you may get up, Nell, and help me get breakfast. Can you leave your new dolly?"

"Oh, yes, mamma!" cried Nelly, "indeed I can." And laying the dolly carefully between the bed-clothes with her head on the pillow, she kissed her, and said, "Good-by, dear Josephine Harriet: you won't be very long alone. I will come back soon."

Rob burst out laughing. "What a name!" he said, mimicking Nelly. "Josephine Harriet! whoever heard such a name?"

"I think it's a real pretty name, Rob," replied Nelly. "Boys don't know any thing about dolls names. Besides, she is named for two people: Josephine is for that poor, dear, beautiful Empress that mamma told us about; I've always thought since then if ever I had a doll handsome enough, I'd name her after her. And Harriet is after Hatty Pratt. I love Hatty dearly, and she's named two dolls after me."

"Well, I shall call the doll the Empress, then," said Rob, in a tone intended to be very sarcastic.

"Yes; so shall I," replied Nelly: "I thought of that. It will sound very nice."

Rob looked a little disappointed. He thought it would tease Nelly to have her doll called "The Empress."

"No: I think I'll call her Mrs. Napoleon," said he.

"Well," said Nelly, "I suppose that would do,"—Nelly had not the least idea that Rob was making fun of her,—"but I don't believe they ever call the real Empress so. I don't remember it in the story. I'll ask mamma. I think Mrs. Napoleon is a beautiful name: don't you, Rob?"

By this time Rob was too deep in the "Cliff Climbers"—one of his new books—to answer; and Nelly was all dressed ready to go downstairs. As she left the room, Rob called out:—

"I say, Nell, tell mamma I don't want any breakfast. I'd rather stay in bed and read this story."

It was a very droll Christmas-day, but the children always said it was one of the very pleasantest they ever spent. It turned out that the cook was really in a heavy drunken sleep. She had been partly under the influence of liquor when she went to bed the night before. That was the reason she had asked Nelly where they would be sleeping in the morning. She did not know what she was saying when she said that. Mr. March went and brought a doctor to look at her in her sleep, for they were afraid it might be apoplexy; but the doctor only laughed, and said:—

"Pshaw! The woman's drunk. Let her alone. She'll wake up by noon."

Mr. and Mrs. March felt very unhappy about this, for Sarah had lived with them two years, and had never done such a thing before. She did not wake up by noon, as the doctor had said. She did not wake up till nearly night; and, when she went downstairs, there were Mrs. March and Nelly and Rob in the kitchen, all at work. Mrs. March and Nelly were washing the dishes, and Rob was cleaning the knives. They had cooked the dinner and eaten it, and cleared every thing away. Sarah dropped into a chair, and looked from one to the other without speaking.

"Hullo!" said Rob, "you cooked us a nice Christmas dinner: didn't you? We'd have never had any if we'd waited for you."

"Do you feel sick now, Sarah?" said good-hearted little Nelly.

Sarah did not speak. Her brain was not yet clear. She looked helplessly from Mrs. March to the children, and from the children to Mrs. March. Then she rose and walked unsteadily to the table, and tried to take the towel out of Nelly's hands.

"Let me wipe the dishes," she said: "my head's better now."

"No, Sarah," said Mrs. March, sternly. "Go back to your room. You're not yet fit to be on your feet."

The children wondered very much that their mamma, who was usually so kind, should speak so sternly to Sarah; but they asked no questions. They were too full of the excitement of doing all the work, and looking at their presents, and talking about them. The hours flew by so quickly that it was dark before they knew it; and, when they went to bed, they both exclaimed together:—

"Oh, Nell!" and "Oh, Rob! hasn't it been a splendid Christmas!"

They remembered it for a great many years, for it was the last Christmas they spent in their pleasant home at Mayfield.

CHAPTER II

A TALK ABOUT LEAVING MAYFIELD

The next day a big snow fell. It was one of those snows which fall so thick and fast and fine, that when you look out of the windows it seems as if great white sheets were being let down from the skies. When Rob first waked and saw this snow falling, he exclaimed:—

"Hurrah! here's a bully snow-storm! Now we'll get some snow-balling. Say, Nell, won't you help me build a real big snow-fort with high walls that we can stand behind, and fire snow-balls at the boys?"

"Oh, Rob!" said Nelly, "I'm afraid mamma won't let you play in the snow yet: your throat isn't well enough; but by next week I think it will be. We'll have snow right along now all winter."

"Oh, dear!" said Rob, fretfully: "there it is again. I can't ever do any thing I want to."

"Why, Rob," replied Nelly, "aren't you ashamed of yourself, with that lovely kaleidoscope and all those books? I shouldn't think you'd want to go out to-day. I'm sure I don't. I'd rather stay at home with Mrs. Napoleon and the rest of my dolls all day than go anywhere,—that is, unless it was to take a sleigh-ride. Mamma said perhaps, if it stopped snowing, papa might take us on a sleigh-ride this afternoon."

"Did she?" exclaimed Rob; "oh, bully! But then I suppose I can't go," he added, in a quite altered tone.

"Oh, yes! you can," answered Nelly, "mamma said so. I heard her tell papa it would do you good to go well wrapped up."

"I hate to be bundled up so," said Rob. "It's as hot as fury; and, besides, it makes the boys laugh; last time I went out so, Ned Saunders he stood on his father's store steps, when we stopped there,—mamma wanted to buy a broom,—and Ned called out, 'By-by, baby bunting, where's your little rabbit skin?' I shan't go if mamma makes me wear that red shawl, so!" and Rob's face was the picture of misery.

Nelly's cheeks flushed at the thought of the insulting taunt to Rob which was conveyed in that quotation from Mother Goose: but she was a very wise and clear-headed little girl, as you have no doubt discovered before this time, and she knew much better than to let Rob think she felt as he did about it; so all she said was, "I don't care: I shouldn't mind. If Ned Saunders had the sore throat, he'd have to be wrapped up just the same way. Boys are a great deal hatefuller than girls. No girl would ever say such a thing as that to a girl if she was sick, or to a boy either."

"No, I don't suppose they would," said Rob, reflectively. "Girls are nicer than boys some ways: that's a fact."

In the excitement of the Christmas presents, and the getting of the Christmas dinner, and all the housework which had to be done afterward, Nelly had forgotten about the conversation which she had overheard in the night between her father and mother. But in the quiet of this stormy morning it all came back to her. She and Rob were spending the forenoon in the place which they liked best in all the house, their mother's room. It was a beautiful sunny chamber, with two big bay-windows in it,—one looking to the south, and one to the west; the south window looked out on the garden, and the west window looked out on a great pine grove which was only a few rods away from the house; on the east side of the room was the fireplace with a low grate set in it; the fire burned better in this fireplace than in any other in the house, the children thought. That was because they had a nice time every night, sitting down a while in front of this fire and talking with their mother. This was the time when they told her things they didn't quite like to tell in the daytime; and this was the time she always took to tell them things she was anxious they should remember. They associated all their talks with the bright open fire; and, whenever they saw the flames of soft coal leaping up and shining, they remembered a great many things their mother had said to them.

There was a large old-fashioned mahogany table on one side of this room, which Mrs. March used for cutting out work, and which the children liked better than any thing in the room. It had droll twisted legs which ended in knobs and castors, and it had big leaves fastened on with brass hinges which opened and shut; when these leaves were open the table was so big that both Rob and Nelly could be up on it at once, and have plenty of room for their things. This morning their mother had let them open it out to its full size, and push it close up in one corner of the room, so that the walls made a fine back for them to lean against. Nelly sat on one side, with all her dolls ranged in a row against the wall, Mrs. Napoleon at the head. In front of her, she had all their clothes in one great pile, and was sorting and arranging them in the little bureau and trunk and boxes in which she kept them. Rob sat opposite her with his feet on a blanket shawl, so that they would not scratch the mahogany; he was reading the "Cliff Climbers," and every few minutes he would break out with:—

"This is the most splendid story of all yet."

"Nell, look at this picture of them going up over the cliff by ropes. Oh, don't I just wish I could go to some such place!"

Nelly sat on one side with all her dolls ranged in a row against the wall. Page 20

After a while, Nelly leaned her head back against the wall, and stopped playing with her dolls. She looked at the snow-storm outside, and the bright fire in the grate, and exclaimed, "Oh, mamma! isn't it nice here?"

There was something in Nelly's tone which made her mother look up surprised.

"Why, yes, dear; of course it is nice here; it is always nice here; what made you think of it just now?"

Nelly March was one of the honestest little girls that ever lived. Nothing seemed to her so dreadful as a lie; but she came very near telling one now.

"I don't know, mamma," she said; but, almost before the words were out of her mouth, she added:—

"Yes, I do know, too; I meant I didn't want to tell."

"Why not? my little daughter," said Mrs. March, looking much puzzled. "Surely it cannot be any thing you do not want mamma to know."

"Oh, no, mamma! it is something you didn't want me to know," said Nelly hastily, turning very red.

"Something I didn't want you to know, Nell," she said. "What do you mean? And how did you know it then?"

"She listened, she listened," cried Rob, throwing down his book, "and she wouldn't tell me a thing either, and she was real mean."

The tears came into Nelly's eyes, and Mrs. March looked very sternly at Rob.

"Rob," she said, "telling tales is as mean as listening: I'm ashamed of you. Nell, what does he mean?"

Poor Nelly was almost crying.

"Indeed, mamma," she exclaimed, "I didn't listen; and I told Rob then I didn't; he's told a lie, a wicked lie, and he ought to be punished, mamma; he knows it's a lie."

"It ain't either," shouted Rob, "if you didn't listen how'd you hear? She did listen, mamma, and now she's told a lie too."

Mrs. March threw down her sewing, and walked quickly across the room to the table where the children were sitting. She put one hand on Nelly's head, and one on Rob's.

"My dear children," she said, "you shock me. Do think what you are saying: this is a bad beginning for the new year."

"'Tain't New Year yet for a week," muttered Rob. "This needn't count."

Mrs. March laughed in spite of herself.

"Every thing counts, Rob, which we do, whether it is the beginning of a New Year or not. Mamma ought not to have spoken as if that made any odds. But you must not accuse each other of lying. That is a most dreadful thing. I know neither of you would tell a lie."

"Course we wouldn't," cried both the children.

"Neither would Nelly listen, Rob, in any such sense as you meant," continued Mrs. March. "Sometimes we over-hear things when we do not mean to."

"That's just the way it was, mamma," interrupted Nelly eagerly; "and I told Rob so: it was in the night, night before last, and you and papa were talking, and I was awake, and I could not help hearing, and I coughed as loud as I could for you to hear."

"Oh," said Mrs. March, "that is it, is it? I remember you coughed, and I shut the door. I did not think you were awake, but I was afraid we should waken you. We were talking about going away from this place."

"Yes, mamma," said Nelly, in a sad tone.

"Going away! Oh, mamma, are we really going away? oh, where? say where, mamma, say quick!" cried Rob, throwing down his "Cliff Climbers," and springing from the table to the floor at one bound.

"Gently, gently, wild boy," said Mrs. March, catching Rob by one arm and drawing him into her lap. In spite of all Rob's ill temper and selfishness, I think Mrs. March loved him a little better than she loved Nelly. Neither Nelly nor Rob dreamed of this, and perhaps Mrs. March never was conscious of it herself; but other people could see it.

"Why, Rob," she said, "would you be glad to go away from this house, and the grove, and the pond, and from all your friends, and go to live in a strange place where you didn't know anybody?"

Rob's face sobered.

"To stay, mamma?" he said, "to stay always?"

Nelly did not speak. She knew more about this matter than Rob did. She watched her mother's face very earnestly and sadly, and tears filled her eyes when Mrs. March answered:—

"I am afraid so, Rob: if we go I do not believe we shall ever come back. I didn't mean to let you know any thing about it till it was all settled. But, since you have heard something about it, I will tell you all I know myself. Come here, Nelly; both of you sit down now at my feet, and I will talk to you about it."

Nelly and Rob sat down on two low crickets by their mother's knee, and looked up in her face without speaking. They felt that something very serious was coming. Before Mrs. March began to speak, she kissed them both several times, then she said:—

"There is one thing I am very sure of: both my little children will be brave and good, if hard times come."

"Oh, mamma! tell us quick; don't bother," interrupted impatient Rob, "let's know what it is quick, mamma. Are we going to be awful poor, like the people in story books? I don't care if we are, if that's all. Let's have it over."

Mrs. March laughed again: one reason she loved Rob so much was that his temper was so much like her own. It had been very hard for her herself to learn to be patient, and to be sufficiently moderate in her speech; and even now there was nothing in the world she disliked so much as suspense of any kind. She could make up her mind to endure almost any thing, if only it were fixed and settled. So when Rob burst out with impatient speeches like this one, she knew exactly how he felt. And sometimes when Nelly took things quietly and calmly, and was so deliberate in all her movements, Mrs. March misunderstood her, and thought she did not really care about any thing half as much as Rob did. But the truth was, Nelly really cared a great deal more about almost everything, than he did. He forgot things in a day, or an hour even; sad things, pleasant things, all alike: they blew away from Rob's memory and Rob's heart like leaves in a great wind, and he never thought much more about any thing than just whether he liked it or disliked it at the moment. The phrase he used to his mother just now was very often on his lips, "Oh, don't bother!" Especially he used to say this to Nelly whenever she tried to reason with him about something which she thought not quite right or not quite safe. You would have thought to hear them talk that Nelly was at least five years older than he: she talked to him like a little mother. At this moment, when Rob was hurrying his mother so impatiently, Nelly exclaimed, "Oh, hush, Rob! do let mamma tell it as she wants to;" and Nelly drew up close to her mother's side, and laid her cheek down on her mother's hand. Nelly's heart was as full as it could be of sympathy: she knew that her mother felt very unhappy about going away, and Nelly's way of showing her sympathy was to be very loving and tender and quiet; but, strange as it may seem, this did not comfort and help Mrs. March so much as Rob's off-hand and impatient way.

"Well, but she's so slow: ain't you slow, mamma? And it's horrid to wait," replied Rob.

"Yes, Rob," laughed Mrs. March. "I am rather slow, and it is horrid to wait; but I won't be slow any longer: this is what papa and I were talking about the other night,—about going out to Colorado to live."

"Colorado! where's that? Is it anywhere near the Himalayas?" cried Rob. "If it is, I'd like to go; oh, I'd like to go ever so much."

Mrs. March laughed out loud. "Oh you droll Rob," she said. "No, it's nowhere near the Himalayas; but there are mountains there about as high as the Himalayas,—higher than any other mountains in America."

"Are there elephants?" said Rob. "I wouldn't mind about any thing if there are only elephants."

"Rob, how can you!" burst out Nelly, with a vehemence very unusual in her. "How can you! It's because papa's sick that we are going."

"Why, what's the matter with papa?" said Rob, wonderingly.

Mr. March had been a sufferer from asthma for so many years that no one any longer thought of him as an invalid. He was very rarely confined to the house, and, except in the summer, his asthma did not give him a great deal of trouble; but in the summer it was so bad that for weeks he was not able to preach at all: I believe I have forgotten all this time to tell you that he was a minister. I have been so busy talking about Nelly and Rob, that I have hardly told you any thing about their papa and mamma.

Mr. March had been settled in this village of Mayfield for fifteen years, and the people loved him so much that they would not hear of having any other minister. When his asthma was so bad that he could not preach, they hired some one else; always in the summer they gave him a two-months' vacation; and, whenever any stranger said any thing unkind about his asthmatic voice, they always replied, "If Mr. March couldn't preach in any thing more than a whisper, we'd rather hear him than any other man living." The truth was, that they had grown so accustomed to the asthmatic, wheezy tone, that they did not notice it. It really was very unpleasant to a stranger's ear, and everybody wondered how a whole congregation of people could endure it. But it is wonderful how much love can do to reconcile us to disagreeable things in the people we love; and not only to reconcile us to them, but to make us forget them entirely. Nelly and Rob never thought but that their father's voice was as pleasant as anybody's: when his breath came very short and quick, they knew he was suffering, but at other times they did not remember any thing about his having asthma; this was the reason that Rob said so wonderingly now:—

"Why, what is the matter with papa?"

Mrs. March's voice was very sad as she replied:—

"Only his asthma, dear, which he has had so many years, but it is growing much worse; and we have seen a gentleman lately who has come from Colorado, and he says that people never have asthma at all there, and the doctor says if papa does not go to some such climate to live, he will get worse and worse, so that he will not be able to do any thing. You don't know how much poor papa suffers, even here. He has not been able to lie down in bed for almost a year now; ever since early last summer."

"Not lie down!" exclaimed Nelly, "why, what does he do, mamma? How does he sleep?"

"He sleeps propped up with pillows, dear, almost as straight as he would be in a chair," replied Mrs. March.

"Oh, dear," cried Rob, "isn't that awful! Why didn't you ever tell us, mamma? Isn't he awful tired? What makes people not have asthma in Colorado, anyhow?"

"Which question first, Rob?" said Mrs. March. "I haven't told you, because papa dislikes very much to have any thing said about it. Yes: he is very tired all the time. He never feels rested in the morning as you do. I don't know why people never have asthma in Colorado; but I think it must be because the air is so very dry there. They never have any rain there from October to April, and the country is very high; some of the towns where people live are twice as high as the highest mountains you ever saw."

"Mamma!" exclaimed Rob, with so loud and earnest a voice that both Mrs. March and Nelly gave a little jump. "Mamma, if it's the being so high up that does the good, why couldn't we go to the Himalayas instead? Oh, it's perfectly splendid there! just let me read you about it," and Rob ran back to the table for his "Cliff Climbers," and was about to begin to read aloud from it. Mrs. March could not help laughing: and Nelly laughed too; for Nelly, although she was no older than Rob, was very much ahead of him in her studies at school, and she knew very well where the Himalaya mountains were, and that there would be no way of living there comfortably even if it were not quite too far to go.

"But, Rob,—" began Mrs. March.

"You just wait till I read you, mamma," interrupted Rob; "you haven't read the 'Cliff Climbers,' and you don't know any thing about it. Perhaps the doctors don't know how many good things grow there; and the mountains are five miles high, some of them. I'm sure papa couldn't have the asthma as high up as that: could he?"

"My dear little boy," said Mrs. March, putting her hand on the book and shutting it up, "you are always too hasty: you must stop and listen. Nobody could live five miles up in the air. That would be as much too high as this is too low; and things which sound very fine to read about would be very inconvenient in real life."

"Yes," interrupted Rob, "an elephant tore down their cabin one night,—just tramped right over it, and smashed it all flat as we would an ant-hill. That wouldn't be very nice: but we needn't live where the elephants come; we could just go out to hunt them in the summer."

Rob's eyes were dark blue, and when he was eager and excited they seemed to turn black, and to be twice their usual size. He was so eager now that his eyes were fairly dancing in his head. He was possessed of this idea about going to live in the Himalaya mountains, and nothing could stop him.

"They're all heathen there too, mamma, and wouldn't papa like that? He could preach to them, don't you know? Oh, it would be splendid! and I could collect seeds just like these cliff climbers, and stuff birds, and make lots of money sending them back to this country."

"Oh, Rob!" exclaimed Nelly, at last; "do stop talking, and let mamma talk: she hasn't half told us yet. It's all nonsense about the Himalayas. We couldn't go there; nobody goes there. I'll just show you on your new globe where it is, and you can see for yourself." So saying, Nelly ran for the globe, and was proceeding to show Rob what a long journey round the world it would be to reach the Himalayas; but Rob pushed the globe away.

"I don't care any thing about the old globe," he said; "people do go there, for Mayne Reid's books are all true; he says they are, and it isn't all nonsense about the Himalayas; is it, mamma? Couldn't we go there?"

Rob was fast growing angry.

"No, Rob," said Mrs. March: "we cannot go to the Himalayas to live; that is very certain. One of these days, when you're a man, I hope you will be able to go all about the world and see all these countries you are so fond of reading about: you will have to wait till then for the Himalayas. If we go away from home at all, we must go to Colorado. That is quite far enough: it will take us four whole days and five nights, going just as fast as the cars can go, to get there."

"I don't care where we go, if we can't go to the Himalayas," said Rob, sulkily. "I think it's real mean if we've got to go away not to go there. I know it would be real good for papa."

Mrs. March laughed again very heartily.

"Rob," she said, "you are a very queer little boy. Mamma can't understand how you get so excited over things in such a short time. A few minutes ago you had never thought of such a thing as going to the Himalayas; and here you are already sure that it would be good for papa to go there. Why, even the doctors are not sure what would be good for papa! It is very hard to tell."

"Does it really take four whole days and five nights to get to Colorado?" asked Rob. He had already given up the idea of the Himalayas, and was beginning to think about Colorado. Rob's mind moved from one thing to another as quickly as a weathercock when the wind is shifting.

"Yes: four whole days and five nights," said Mrs. March; "or else four nights and five days, according to the time you start."

"Five days! days! Let's start so as to make it come five days; so as to see all we can," exclaimed Rob. "That's splendid! When will we start, mamma?"

"It isn't really sure, is it, mamma, that we are to go?" asked Nelly, who had hardly had a chance yet to speak a word: Rob had been talking so fast. "Does papa want to go?"

You see how much more thoughtful Nelly was for other people than for herself. All Rob was thinking of was what good times might come of this journey; but Nelly was thinking how hard it was for her papa and mamma to break up their pleasant home, and how sad it might be for all of them to go to live among strangers.

"No, dear," said Mrs. March. "Papa does not want to go at all. It is very hard for him to make up his mind to do it. And I do not want to go either, except on papa's account: but we would go anywhere in the world that would make papa well; wouldn't we?"

"Yes, indeed," said Nelly, earnestly.

"Why doesn't papa want to go?" cried Rob. "There'll be plenty of people there to preach to: won't there? And that's all papa cares for."

"Papa doesn't like to leave all these people here that he has preached to for so many years: he loves them all very much," replied Mrs. March; "and he does not expect to preach any more if he goes to Colorado. There are not a great many villages there; it is chiefly a wild new country: people live on great farms and keep large herds of sheep or of cows; and the doctor wants papa to be a farmer and work out of doors, and not live in his study among his books any more."

"Be a farmer like Uncle Alonzo?" exclaimed Nelly. "Oh, mamma, wouldn't that be nice? and wouldn't papa like that? He always has a good time when he goes to Uncle Alonzo's. He says it makes him feel as if he was a boy again. And oh, mamma, the cows are beautiful. Don't you like cows, mamma?"

Nelly was now almost as excited as Rob. She had been several times to make a visit at her Uncle Alonzo's house. He was a rich farmer, and had big barns, and fields full of raspberries and huckleberries, and a beautiful pine grove close to the house; and he had nearly a hundred cows, and used to make butter and cheese to sell, and both Nelly and Rob thought there was nothing so delightful in the whole world as to stay at Uncle Alonzo's.

"No, dear," said Mrs. March. "I can't honestly say I do like cows. I am so silly as to be afraid of them. But I like your Uncle Alonzo's farm very much."

"Oh, mamma, how can you be afraid of a cow!" cried Rob. "They never hurt you."

"I suppose it's because I am a coward, Rob," answered Mrs. March; "but I can't help it. I was chased by a bull once when I was a girl; and, ever since then, I have been afraid of any thing which has horns on its head."

"Is that what the word coward comes from, mamma?" asked Rob: "does it mean to be afraid of a cow?"

"I guess not, Rob," said Mrs. March, laughing. "Don't begin to make puns, Rob: it is a bad habit."

"Puns!" said Rob, much surprised; "what is a pun?"

Then Mrs. March tried to explain to Rob what a pun was, but it was very hard work; and I don't think Rob understood, after all her explanations, so I shall not try to explain it to you here; but I dare say a great many of you understand what a pun is, and, if you do, you will see that Rob had accidentally made rather a good pun, for a little boy only twelve years old, when he asked if a coward was a person afraid of a cow.

Presently the dinner-bell rang.

"Why, mamma," exclaimed both the children, "it isn't dinner-time, is it?"

"Yes, it really is," said Mrs. March, looking at her watch: "I had no idea it was so late. Where has the morning gone to?"

"Gone to Colorado," exclaimed Rob, running downstairs, "gone to Colorado! Hurrah for Colorado."

"By way of the Himalayas," said Nelly behind him, as they ran downstairs.

"Be still, Nell, can't you," said Rob, half vexed, half laughing. "I haven't been in Geography half so long as you have. We haven't come to the Himalayas yet."

Mr. March was just coming in at the front-door. He was so covered with snow that he looked like a snow-man; and as he stamped his feet on the door-mat, and shook off the snow from his overcoat and hat and beard, there seemed to be quite a snow-storm in the hall.

"Hurrah for Colorado," he repeated. "What does that mean? Who is going to Colorado?"

"All of us, papa; all of us, papa," cried Rob. "Mamma's told us all about it, so you can't keep it a secret any longer."

Mr. March looked up inquiringly at Mrs. March, who was coming down the stairs behind Nelly and Rob.

"Yes," she said, in answer to his inquiring look. "Yes. I have told the children all about it, and they are both wild to go, though Rob thinks the Himalayas would be a better place for you."

Mr. March burst into a loud laugh.

"The Himalayas!" he exclaimed. "Why, what do you know about the Himalayas, my boy?"

It was rather too bad to laugh at Rob so much about his idea of the Himalayas, I think; because almost any boy who had just been reading Captain Mayne Reid's "Cliff Climbers," would think that there could be nothing in this life half so fine to do as to go to the Himalayas to live. Rob took it very good-naturedly this time, however.

"Not any thing, papa," he replied, "except what is in that book you gave me, the 'Cliff Climbers;' but that says some of the mountains are five miles high, and I thought that would cure the asthma, to go up as high as that. Mamma says that's what we are going to Colorado for, to get up high, to cure your asthma."

"Papa, we're so glad to go if it will make you better," said Nelly, taking hold of her father's hand with both of hers. Mr. March stooped over and kissed Nelly on her forehead.

"I know you are," he said: "you are papa's own little comfort always."

Mr. March loved both of his children very dearly; but Nelly gave him more pleasure than Rob did. He often said to his wife when they were alone: "Nelly never gives me a moment's anxiety. The child has all the traits which will make her a noble and a useful and a happy woman; but I am not so sure about Rob. I am afraid we shall have trouble with him." And Mrs. March always replied: "It is very true all you say about Nelly. She is a thoroughly good child; but you are quite mistaken about Rob. He is very hasty and impulsive; but he will come out all right. He has twice Nelly's cleverness, though he is so backward about his books. You'll see."

"I'm glad too, papa," cried Rob, "just as glad as any thing. It will be splendid to live on a farm. Shall you wear blue overalls like Uncle Alonzo? And will you let me help milk? And can't I have a bull pup? I'm going to call him Caesar."

"Well, upon my word, young people," said Mr. March; and he looked at his wife when he spoke, "you seem to have got this thing pretty well settled between you. I don't know that we are going to Colorado at all: after dinner we will all sit down together and talk it over. I've got a letter here"—and he took a big envelope out of his pocket—"from a gentleman I wrote to in Colorado, and he has sent me some pictures of different places there, and of some of the strange rocks. We can't have our sleigh-ride this afternoon; it is not going to stop snowing: so we may as well take a journey to Colorado on paper; perhaps it will be the only way we shall ever go."

Rob and Nelly could hardly eat their dinner: they were so eager to see the Colorado pictures and to hear all about the country.

As Mr. March looked at their eager faces, he sighed, and thought to himself:—

"Dear little souls! They have no idea of what is before them if we go to Colorado. It is as well they haven't."

"What makes you look so sad, papa?" said Nelly.

"Did I look sad, Nelly?" replied Mr. March. "I didn't mean to. I was thinking how delighted you and Rob seemed at the idea of going to Colorado, and thinking that you would probably find it very different from what you expect. You would not be so comfortable there as you are here."

"Isn't there enough to eat out there?" asked Rob, anxiously.

"Oh, yes!" said Mr. March, laughing, "plenty to eat."

"Well, that's all I care for," said Rob. "Oh, papa, do hurry! you never ate your dinner so slow before. I've been done ever so long. Can't I be excused, and go and read till you're ready to show us the pictures?"

"Yes," said Mrs. March, "you may both go up into my room; and, as soon as papa and I have finished our dinner, we will come up there and have our talk."

Mrs. March wished to have a little conversation alone with her husband before their talk with the children. She told him about Nelly's having accidentally overheard what they were saying in the night; "so I thought I would tell them all about it," she said.

"Certainly, certainly," said Mr. March. "There is no reason they should not know. Even if we do not go, no harm can come of it."

Then she told him of the obstinate notion Rob had taken into his head about the Himalayas, and how hard it had been to convince him that they ought not to set off for those mountains at once. Mr. March was laughing very heartily over this as they went up the stairs, and, as they entered the room, Rob said:—

"What are you and mamma laughing so about, papa?"

Mrs. March gave her husband a meaning look, intended to warn him not to tell Rob that they were laughing at him; but Mr. March did not understand her glance.

"Laughing at your fierce desire to start off for the Himalayas, Rob," he said.

"I don't care," said Rob: "I'm going there some day. You just read the 'Cliff Climbers,' and see if you don't think so too. I'll take you and mamma and Nell there when I'm a man and have money enough; see if I don't."

"Well, well, Rob, we'll go when that time comes, if we're not too old when you're rich enough to pay all that the journey costs. I've always thought I should like to go round the world," said Mr. March; "but now we'll look at the Colorado pictures."

Then they sat down, Mr. and Mrs. March on the lounge in front of the fire, Nelly in her father's lap, and Rob perched up on the back of the lounge behind his mother, so that he could look over her shoulder.

The first picture Mr. March took out of the envelope was one which looked like the picture of two gigantic legs and feet wrong side up.

"Oh, what big feet!" exclaimed Rob. "Do giants live in Colorado?"

Mr. March turned the picture the other side up.

"They are rocks, Rob," he said, "not feet; but they do look like feet, that's a fact. These are some of the rocks in a place called Monument Park, because it is so full of these queer rocks. Here are some more of them: they are of very strange shapes. Here are some that look like women walking with big hoop-skirts on, and some like posts with round caps on their heads; and here is a picture of a place where so many of these rocks are scattered among the trees, that they look like people walking about. Here is one group which has been called the 'Quaker Wedding.'"

"Oh, let me see that! let me see that!" exclaimed Nelly. "How queer to call rocks Quakers!"

"I don't see that they look very much like men and women, after all," added she as she studied the picture; "but they don't look like any rocks I ever saw. I think I should be afraid of them. They look alive."

"Pooh!" said Rob, "I shouldn't be. Rocks can't stir. Show us some more, papa."

The next pictures were of beautiful waterfalls: there were three of them,—one of seven falls, one above the other, and one of a beautiful fall, very narrow, hemmed in between rocks, with tall pine-trees growing about it. The next was of a high mountain with snow half way down its sides, and a great many lower mountains all around it. This was called Pike's Peak.

"Oh, papa!" said Nelly, "could we live where we could see that mountain all the time?"

"Perhaps so, Nell," answered her father, smiling at her eagerness: "would you like to?"

Nelly was looking at the picture intently, and did not reply for a moment. Then she said:—

"Papa, I think it would keep us good all the time to look at that mountain."

"Why, Nell," said her mother, "I didn't know you cared so much for mountains. You never said so."

"I never saw a real mountain before," said Nelly. "This isn't a bit like Mount Saycross."

The town of Mayfield was in one of the pleasantest counties in Massachusetts. The region was very beautifully wooded and had several small rivers in it, and one range of low hills called the Saycross Hills; the highest of these was perhaps three thousand feet high, and Nelly had spent many a day on its top: but she had never seen any thing which gave her any idea of the grandeur of a high mountain till she saw this picture of Pike's Peak. It seemed as if she could not take her eyes away from this picture: she looked at it as one looks at the picture of the face of a friend.

"Oh papa!" she exclaimed at last, "let me have this picture for my own: won't you? I'll be very, very careful of it."

"Yes, you may have it if you want it so much," replied Mr. March, "but be very sure not to lose it. I may want to show it to some one, any day."

"I won't lose it, papa," said Nelly, in a tone of so much feeling that her father looked at her in surprise.

"Why, Nell," he said, "you must be a born mountaineer I think."

And so she was. From the day she first looked on this picture of Pike's Peak till the day when she stood at the foot of the real mountain itself, it was seldom out of her mind. She kept the little card in the box with Mrs. Napoleon's best bonnet and gown, and she talked so much about it that her father called her his "little Pike's Peak girl."

The rest of the pictures were of some of the towns in Colorado, some ranches,—ranches is the word which the Coloradoans use instead of farm,—and some beautiful canyons. A canyon is either a narrow valley with very high steep sides to it, or a chasm between two rocky walls. The most beautiful and wonderful things in Colorado are the canyons; they all have streams of water running through them; in fact, the canyons may be said to be roads which rivers and creeks have made for themselves among the mountains. Sometimes the river has cut a road for itself right down through solid rock, twelve hundred feet deep. You can think how deep that must be, by looking at the walls of the room you are sitting in, as you read this story. Probably the walls of your room are about ten feet high. Now imagine walls of rock one hundred and twenty times as high as that; and only far enough apart for a small river to go through at the bottom; and then imagine beautiful great pine-trees, and many sorts of shrubs and flowers growing all the way down these sides, and along the upper edges of them, and don't you see what a wonderful place a canyon must be? You mustn't think either that they are just straight up and down walls, such as a mason might build out of bricks, or that they run straight in one direction for their whole length. They are made up often of great rocks as big as houses piled one on top of another, and all rough and full of points, and with big caves in them; and they turn and twist, just as the river has turned and twisted, to the north or south or east or west. Sometimes they take such sharp turns that, when you look ahead, all you can see is the big high wall right before you, and it looks as if you couldn't go any farther; but, when you go a few steps nearer, you will see that both the high walls bend off to the right or the left, and the river is still running between them, and you can go right on. One of the prettiest pictures which Mr. March's friend had sent him was of a canyon called Boulder Canyon. It is named after the town of Boulder, which is very near it. This is one of the most beautiful canyons in all Colorado. It is very narrow, for the creek which made it is a small creek; but the bed of the creek is full of great rocks, and the creek just goes tumbling head over heels, if a creek can be said to have head and heels. Ten miles long this canyon is, and the creek is in a white foam all the way. There is just room for the road by side of the creek; first one side and then the other. I think it crosses the creek as many as twenty-five times in the ten miles; and it is shaded all the way by beautiful trees, and flowers grow in every crevice of the rocks, and along the edge of the water. As Rob and Nelly looked at picture after picture of these beautiful places, they grew more and more excited. Rob could not keep still: he jumped down from his perch behind his mother's shoulder, and ran round to his father's knee. "Papa, papa! say you'll go? say you'll go?" and Nelly said in her quieter voice:—

"Oh papa! I didn't know there were such beautiful places in the world. Don't you think we'll go?"

Pretty soon it grew too dark to look at the pictures any longer, and Mrs. March sent the children downstairs to play in the dining-room by the fire-light.

After they had gone, she said to her husband: "Doesn't it make you more willing to go, Robert, to see how eager the children are for it?"

Mr. March sighed.

"I do not know, Sarah," he said. "Their feelings are very soon changed one way or the other. A little discomfort would soon make them unhappy. I have great fears about the rough life out there, both for them and for you."

"I wish you would not think so much about that," replied Mrs. March. "I am convinced that you exaggerate it. I am not in the least afraid; and as for the children they are so young they would soon grow accustomed to any thing. Of course there would be no danger of our not being able to have good plain food; and that is the only real necessity."

"But you seem to forget, Sarah, about schools. How are we to educate the children there?"

"Teach them ourselves, Robert," replied Mrs. March earnestly. "It will be better for them in every way. Such an out-door life as they will lead there is ten times better than all the schools in the world. Oh, Robert! if you can only be well and strong, we shall be perfectly happy. I am as eager to go as the children are."

Mrs. March had been from the beginning in favor of the move. In fact, except for her, Mr. March would never have thought of it. He was a patient and quiet man, and would have gone on bearing the suffering of his asthma till he died, without thinking of the possibility of escaping it by so great a change as the going to a new country to live. It was well for him that he had a wife of a different nature. Mrs. March had no patience with people who, as she said, would "put up with any thing, rather than take trouble." Mrs. March's way was never to "put up" with any thing which was wrong, unless she had tried every possible way of righting it. Then, when she was convinced that it couldn't be righted, she would make the best of it, and not grumble or be discontented. Which way do you think was the best?—Mr. March's or Mrs. March's? I think Mrs. March's was; and I think Rob and Nelly were very fortunate children to have a mother who taught them such a good doctrine of life. This is the way she would have put it, if she had been going to write it out in rules.

First. If you don't like a thing, try with all your might to make it as you do like it.

Second. If you can't possibly make it as you like it, stop thinking about it: let it go.

There was a very wise man, who lived hundreds and hundreds of years ago, who said very much the same thing, only in different words. I don't know whether Mrs. March ever heard of him or not. His name was Epictetus, and he was only a poor slave. But he said so many wise things that men kept them and printed them in a book; and one of the things he said was this:—

"There are things which are within our power, and there are things which are beyond our power. Seek at once to be able to say to every unpleasing semblance: 'You are but a semblance, and by no means the real thing.' And then examine it by those rules which you have; and first and chiefly by this: whether it concerns the things which are within our own power, or those which are not; and if it concerns any thing beyond our power, be prepared to say that it is nothing to you."

I think this would be a good rule for all of us to copy and pin up on the door of our rooms, to read every morning before we go downstairs. Some of the words sound a little hard to understand at first: but after they are explained to you they wouldn't seem so; and if we all lived up to this rule, we should always be contented.

Late in the evening, after the children had gone to bed, as Mr. and Mrs. March sat talking over their plans, there came a loud ring at the door-bell.

"I think that is Deacon Plummer," said Mr. March. "He said he would come in to-night and talk over Colorado. He has been thinking for some time of going out there; and, if we go, I think he will go too."

"Will he, really?" exclaimed Mrs. March. "And Mrs. Plummer? What a help that would be!"

"Yes, it would be a great advantage," said Mr. March. "He is the best farmer in all this region, and as honest as the day is long; and, queer as he is, I like him, I believe, better than any deacon I've ever had."

"And he likes you too," said Mrs. March. "I believe if he goes now, it will be only to go with you; or, at least, partly for that. Mrs. Plummer's health, I suppose, is one reason."

"Yes, that is it," said Mr. March. "The doctors say she must go to Florida next winter: she can't stand another of our winters here; and Mr. Plummer says he'd rather break up altogether and move to a new place, than be always journeying back and forth."

Just as Mr. March pronounced these words, the door opened and Deacon and Mrs. Plummer appeared. They were a very droll little couple: they were very short and very thin and very wrinkled. Deacon Plummer had little round black eyes, and Mrs. Plummer had little round blue eyes. Deacon Plummer had thin black hair, which was very stiff, and never would lie down flat, and Mrs. Plummer had very thin white hair, which was as soft as a baby's, and always clung as close to her head as if it had been glued on. It was so thin that the skin of her head showed through, pink, in many places; and, except for the little round knot of hair at the back, you might have taken it for a baby's head. Deacon Plummer always spoke very fast and very loud, so loud that at first you jumped, and wondered if he thought everybody was deaf. Mrs. Plummer always spoke in a little fine squeaky voice, and had to stop to cough every few minutes, so it took her a great while to say any thing. Deacon Plummer very seldom smiled, and looked quite fierce. Mrs. Plummer had a habit of smiling most of the time, and looked so good-natured she looked almost silly. She was not silly, however: she was sensible, and was one of the best housekeepers and cooks in all Mayfield. She was famous for making good crullers; and, whenever she came to Mr. March's house, she always brought four crullers in her pocket,—two for Rob and two for Nelly. As soon as she came into the room this night, she began fumbling in her pocket, saying:—

"Good evening, Mrs. March. How do you do, Mr. March?" (cough, cough). "I've brought a cruller" (cough, cough) "for the" (cough, cough) "children. Dear me" (cough, cough), "they're crumbled up" (cough, cough). "I got a leetle too much lard in 'em, jest a leetle, and the leastest speck too much lard'll make 'em crumble like any thing" (cough, cough); "but I reckon the crumbs'll taste good" (cough, cough) "if they be crumbled" (cough, cough); and, going to the table, she turned her pocket wrong side out, and emptied upon a newspaper a large pile of small bits of cruller. "Do you think they'll mind their being" (cough, cough) "crumbled up?" (cough, cough) "'twas only my spectacle case" (cough, cough) "did it," she said, looking anxiously at the crumbs.

"Call 'em crumblers! call 'em crumblers," said Deacon Plummer, laughing hard at his own joke, and rubbing his hands together before the fire; "tell the children they're a new kind, called crumblers."

"Oh! the children won't mind," said Mrs. March, politely, and she brought a glass dish from the closet, and, filling it with the crumbs, covered it with a red napkin, and set it on the sideboard. "There," said she, "as soon as Rob comes downstairs in the morning, he will peep into this dish, and the first thing he will say will be, 'I know who's been here: Mrs. Plummer's been here. I know her crullers.' That's what he always says when he finds your crullers on the sideboard."

Mrs. Plummer's little blue eyes twinkled with pleasure, so that the wrinkles around their corners all folded together like the sticks of an umbrella shutting up.

"Does he now, really?" she said. "The dear little fellow! Children always does like crullers."

"Crumblers; call 'em crumblers," shouted the Deacon. "That's the best name for 'em anyhow."

"Well, Parson," he said, "how's Colorado? Heard any thing more? Me an' my wife's gettin' more'n more inter the notion of goin', that is, ef you go. We shan't pick up an' go off by ourselves; we're too old, an' we ain't used enough to travellin': but ef you go, we go; that's about fixed, ain't it, 'Lizy?" and he looked at his wife and then at Mr. March and then at Mrs. March, with his queer little quick, fierce glance, as if he had said something very warlike, and everybody were going to contradict him at once.

"Yes" (cough, cough), "I expect we'd better" (cough, cough) "go 'long; 't seems kinder" (cough, cough) "providential like our all goin'" (cough, cough) "together so. Don't you think" (cough, cough) "so, Mrs. March? Be ye sure" (cough, cough) "ye'd like to have us go?" replied Mrs. Plummer.

"Oh, yes, indeed!" said Mrs. March. "Mr. March was just speaking of it when you came in how much he would like to have Deacon Plummer go. Mr. March knows very little about farming, though he was brought up on a farm, and he will be very glad of Deacon Plummer's help; and I shall be very glad to see two Mayfield faces there. I expect to be lonely sometimes."

"Lonely, ma'am, lonely!" spoke up the Deacon: "can't be lonely, ma'am. Don't think of such a thing, ma'am, with the youngsters, ma'am, and me an' my wife, ma'am, an' the Parson. I'd like to see you have a lonesome minnit, ma'am;" and the Deacon looked round on them all again with his quick, fierce look.

Mr. March laughed. "It seems to be shutting in all round us, Sarah, to take us to Colorado: doesn't it?"

"It isn't two hours," he continued, turning to Deacon Plummer, "since the children left us to go to bed, with their heads so full of Colorado and their desire to set out for the country immediately, that I am afraid they haven't shut their eyes yet. And as for Nelly, she's gone to bed with a picture of Pike's Peak in her hand."

"Picture! Have ye got pictures of the country round about there?" interrupted the Deacon. "I'd like to see 'em, Parson; so'd Elizy. She was a wonderin' how 'twould look in them parts. She hain't travelled none, Elizy hain't, since she was a gal. I hain't never been much of a hand to stir away from home, an' I donno now what's taken me so sudden to go so far away; but I expect it's providential."

Mr. March took the Colorado pictures out of the big envelope again, and showed them to Deacon and Mrs. Plummer. They were as interested in them as Rob and Nelly had been, and it made Mrs. March laugh to think how much the old man and his wife, bending over the pictures, looked like Rob and Nelly suddenly changed from ten years old to sixty. Mrs. Plummer did not say much. Her spectacles were not quite strong enough for her eyes. She had been for a whole year thinking of getting a new pair, and she wished to-night she had done so, for she could not see any thing in the stereoscope distinctly. But she saw enough to fill her with wonder and delight, and make her impatient to go to the country where there were such beautiful sights to be seen. As for the Deacon, he could hardly contain himself: in his excitement, he slapped Mr. March's knee, and exclaimed:—

"By golly,—beg your pardon, sir,—but this must be the greatest country goin'. It'd pay to go jest to see it, ef we didn't any more 'n look round 'n come right home again. Don't you think so, Elizy?"

The enthusiasm of these good old people, and the eager wishes of the children produced a great impression on both Mr. and Mrs. March. It did really seem as if every thing showed that they ought to go; and, before Deacon and Mrs. Plummer went home, it was about decided that the plan should be carried out.

Deacon Plummer was for starting immediately.

"I'll jest turn the key in my house," he said, "'n start right along; 'n you'd better do the same thing; we don't want to be left without a roof to come back to ef things turns out different from what we expect; ef we settle, we kin come back 'n sell out afterwards; 'n the sooner we git there the better, afore the heavy snows set in."

"But they don't have heavy snows in Colorado, not in the part where we are going," said Mr. March: "the cattle run out in the open fields all winter."

"You don't mean to tell me so!" exclaimed the Deacon. "What a country to live in! I should think everybody'd go into raisin' cattle afore anything else."

"I think that is one of the best things to do there," replied Mr. March. "I have already made up my mind to that. And there is nothing I should enjoy more. And between your farming and my herds of cattle, we ought to make a good living. Deacon, come round in the morning and we'll talk it over more, and see what time it's best to start."

At breakfast the next morning, Mr. March told Rob and Nelly that it was decided that they would move out to Colorado. The two children received the news very differently. Nelly dropped her knife and fork, and looked steadily in her father's face for a full minute: her cheeks grew red, and she drew in a long breath, and said, "Oh! oh!" That was all she said; but her face was radiant with happiness. Rob bounded out of his chair, flew to his mother and gave her a kiss, then to his father and gave him a great hug, and then he gave a regular Indian war-whoop, as he ran back to his seat.

"Rob! Rob! you must not be so boisterous," exclaimed his mother; but she was laughing as hard as she could laugh, and Rob knew she was not really displeased with him.

"Oh Nell, Nell!" cried Rob, "isn't it splendid? why don't you say any thing?"

"I can't," replied Nelly. But her cheeks were growing redder and redder every minute, and her father saw that tears were coming in her eyes.

"Why, Nell," he said, "you are not sorry, are you? I thought you wanted to go."

"Oh, so I do, papa," exclaimed Nelly; "I want to go so much that I can't believe it."

Mr. March smiled. He understood Nelly better than her mother did.

CHAPTER III

OFF FOR COLORADO

It was finally decided that it would be best not to set out for Colorado until the middle of March. There were many things to be arranged and provided for, and Mr. March did not wish to leave the people of his parish too suddenly. Afterward he wished that he had gone away immediately, as soon as his decision was made; for the ten weeks that he waited were merely ten long weeks of good-bye. Everybody loved him, and was sorry he was going; and there was not a day that somebody did not come in to hear the whole story over again, why he was going, when he was going, where he was going, and all about it. At last Mrs. March grew so tired of talking it all over and over, that she said to people: "I really can't talk any more about it. We are not going till the fifteenth of March, but I wish it were to-morrow." After the first two or three weeks, Rob and Nelly lost much of their interest in talking it over; two months ahead seemed to them just as far off as two years; and they did not more than half believe they would ever really go. But when the packing began, all their old interest and enthusiasm returned, and they could not keep quiet a moment. Nelly's great anxiety was to decide whether she would better carry Mrs. Napoleon in her arms all the way or let her go in a trunk. She said to her mother that she really thought Mrs. Napoleon would go safer in her arms than anywhere else. "You see, mamma, I should never lay her down a single minute, and how could any thing happen to her then? But in the trunk she would be shaken and jolted all the time." The truth was, Nelly was very proud of Mrs. Napoleon, and she secretly had thought to herself, "I expect there'll be a great many little girls in the cars: in four whole days, there must be; and they would all like to see such a beautiful doll."

Mrs. March understood this feeling in Nelly perfectly well, and it amused her very much to see how Nelly was trying to deceive herself about it.

"But, Nelly," she said, "the cars will be full of cinders and dust, and they will be sure to stick to the wax. Her face would get dirty in a single day, and you can't wash it as you do Pocahontas's. Don't you think you'd better carry Pocahontas instead?"

Pocahontas was Nelly's next best doll: she was the big one I told you about; the one that was almost the size of a real live baby; the one which was so big that it made Mrs. March first think of using her father's great stockings to hang up for Christmas stockings for the children.

"Oh, mamma!" said Nelly: "Pocahontas is too heavy; and I don't care half so much for her as for dear beautiful Josephine. I shouldn't care very much if Pocahontas did get broken, but if any thing were to happen to the Empress it would be dreadful. Do let me carry her, mamma. I'll make her a beautiful waterproof cloak just like mine; and she can wear two veils just as you do on the water."

"Very well, Nelly, you can do as you like," replied her mother; "but I warn you that you will wish the doll out of the way a great many times before we reach our journey's end; and I am afraid her looks will be entirely spoiled."

"Oh, no, mamma!" replied Nelly, confidently. "You'll see you haven't the least idea what good care I shall take of her."

At last the day came when the last box was shut and nailed and corded, the last leather bag locked, the last bundle rolled up and strapped; and Mr. and Mrs. March, and Rob and Nelly, and little Deacon Plummer and his good little wife, all stood on the doorsteps of the parsonage waiting for the stage, which was to carry them ten miles to the railway station where they were to take the cars. Mrs. Napoleon really looked very pretty in her long waterproof cloak; it was of bright blue lined with scarlet; and she wore a dark blue hat with a little bit of scarlet feather in it, to match her cloak; and she had a dark blue veil, two thicknesses of it, pinned very tight over her face and hat; Nelly held her hugged tight in her arms, and never put her down.

"Oh, my! before I'd be bothered with a doll to carry," exclaimed Rob, looking at Nelly,—"leave her behind. Give her to Mary Pratt. You won't care for dolls out in Colorado. I know you won't."

Nelly gave Rob a look which would have melted the heart of an older boy; but Rob was not to be melted.

"Oh, you needn't look that way!" he said. "A doll's a plague: I heard mamma tell you so too, so now, there," he added triumphantly. Nelly walked away in silence, and only hugged Mrs. Napoleon tighter, and Mr. March, who had been watching the scene, said to his wife: "Look at that motherly little thing. The doll's the same to her as a baby to you."

"Yes," said Mrs. March, "but Rob's right after all. It'll be a great bother having that wax doll along; but I thought it was better to let Nelly see for herself. I dare say she'll forget it, and leave it at the first place where we change cars."

"Not she," said Mr. March. "You don't know Nelly half so well as I do, Sarah, if she is your own child. Nelly'd carry that doll round the world and never lay it down."

"We'll see," said Mrs. March, laughing. Mr. March was a little vexed at his wife for saying this; and he privately resolved that he would keep an eye on Mrs. Napoleon himself all through the journey, and see that she was not left behind at any station.

Four days and four nights in the cars, going, going, going every minute, night and day, dark and light, asleep and awake: nobody has any idea what such a journey is till he takes it. Poor old Deacon Plummer and Mrs. Plummer were so tired by the end of the second day that they looked about ninety years old.

"Deary me!" Mrs. Plummer said a dozen times a day. "It's a great deal farther than I thought."

"I told you, Elizy, it was four days and four nights," the Deacon always replied; "but I suppose you didn't sense it no more'n I did. Nobody couldn't believe the joltin' 'd be so wearin'. I feel's if my bones was all jelly in my skin," and the poor old man moved as if they were. He reeled when he walked; and, at each lurch the cars gave, he would catch hold of anything or anybody who happened to be near him. If it were a person, he would apologize most humbly: but if the car gave another lurch, even while he was apologizing, he would catch hold again, just as hard as before, at which the person would walk away quite offended; and very soon everybody in the car tried to keep out of the old man's way, they were so afraid of being violently laid hold of by him.

Rob and Nelly did not mind the jolting; did not mind the lurches the cars gave; did not mind the cinders, the dust, the noise. They were having the best time they ever had in their lives. For the first two days of their journey, they were in what is called "The drawing-room," in the sleeping-car. I wonder if I could make those of you who have never been in a sleeping-car understand about this little room. I will try.

Most of the sleeping-cars have merely shelves along the sides in the place where the seats are in the ordinary day-cars: curtains are hung in front of these shelves, and they are parted off from each other like the shelves in a long cupboard. In the daytime, these shelves are folded away and fastened up against the walls, and seats left below them. At night when people are ready to go to bed, the shelves are let down, and the curtains put up in front of them, and each person climbs up on his shelf, and undresses behind the curtain, and goes to bed. I forgot to say that a very good little bed is made up on each shelf. A man who has the care of the car, and who is called the porter, makes these beds. This is the way it is in nearly all the sleeping-cars. But there are some cars which have, besides these, a nice little room walled off at one end. It has seats for two people on each side; and these seats are made into comfortable beds at night. It has two windows which open on the outside of the car, and two which open on the narrow aisle of the car; these four windows are all your own, if you have hired the whole little room for yourself. You can have them either open or shut, just as you like, and nobody else has any right to say any thing about it, which is a great comfort; in the ordinary car, you know there is always somebody just behind you or just before you who is either too hot or too cold, and wants the windows shut when you want them open, or open when you want them shut. This little room has a door at each end of it. One opens into the car where the rest of the people are sitting. The other opens into a nice little closet where there is a washbowl and water, and you can take a bath comfortably. At night the porter comes and hangs up curtains across these doors, because they have glass in the tops of them; then he draws the curtains at your windows; then he lights a lamp which hangs in the middle of the ceiling in your room: and there you are shut up in as cunning a little bedroom as you would ever want to see; and almost as snug and private as you could be in your own bedroom. You can undress and go to bed comfortably; and, unless the jolting of the car keeps you awake, you can sleep all night as soundly as you would at home.

Rob and Nelly were delighted with this little room. So was Mrs. March. She hung up their cloaks and hats on the hooks, and took out their books and papers, and made the little room look like home. Nelly propped Mrs. Napoleon up in one corner of one of the red velvet arm-chairs, and took off her blue veils, for there seemed to be no dust at all.

"I wish I'd brought Pocahontas too," said Nelly: "there is so much room, and dolls do look so nice travelling like other people."

"People!" laughed Rob. "Dolls ain't people."

"They are too," said Nelly. "People are men and women, and there are boy dolls and girl dolls and women dolls and men dolls."

"Mamma, are dolls people?" asked Rob, vehemently. "Nell says they are, and I say they ain't. They ain't: are they?"

"Not live people," said Mrs. March: "Nell didn't mean that."

"Oh, no!" said Nelly; "but they're play people, and you can't be sure they don't know any thing just because they don't speak. I could go a whole year without speaking if I tried to."

"I believe you could," laughed Mrs. March; "but Rob couldn't."

"Not I," said Rob. "What's the use? I like to talk. Nell's a dumb-cat: that's what she is."

"I can talk if I've a mind to," retorted Nelly; "but I don't want to; that is, not very often: I don't see the use in it."

This is the way it always was with Rob and Nelly. Dearly as they loved each other, they never thought alike about any thing: but for that very reason they did each other good; much more than if they had been just alike.

When it was time for breakfast or for dinner, the black porter, whose name was Charley, brought in a little square table and set it up as firm as he could between the seats. Then Mr. March lifted up the big luncheon-basket on one of the chairs, and Mrs. March took out her spirit-lamp, and they had great fun cooking. There was a saucepan which fitted over the spirit-lamp, and the flame of the spirit-lamp was so large that water boiled in this saucepan in a very few minutes. Mrs. March could make tea or chocolate or coffee: she could boil eggs, or warm up beef soup; then, after they had eaten all they wanted, they heated more water in the same saucepan and washed their dishes in it. At first, this seemed dreadful to Nelly, who was a very neat little girl.

"Oh, mamma," she said, "how horrid to cook in the same pan you wash dishes in!" But Mrs. March laughed at her, and told her that when people were travelling they could not afford to be so particular.

It was only for the first two days and nights of their journey that they had this comfortable little room. On the morning of the third day they reached Kansas City, and there they had to change cars. They sat in a large and crowded waiting-room, while Mr. March went to see about the tickets. Nelly and Rob looked with great astonishment on every thing they saw. They seemed already to have come into a new world. The people looked strange, and a great many of them were speaking German. There were whole families—father, mother, and perhaps half-a-dozen little children—sitting on the railway platforms, on big chests, which were tied up with strong ropes. They had great feather-beds, too, tied in bundles and bulging out all round the ropes. Their faces were very red, and their clothes were old and patched: if Nelly had met them in the lanes of Mayfield, she would have taken them for beggars; but here they were travelling just like herself, going the same way too, for she watched several of them getting into the same train. Then there were groups of men in leather clothes, with their boots reaching up to their knees, and powder-horns slung across their shoulders. They all carried rifles: some of them had two or three; and one of them, as he stepped on the platform, threw down a dead deer; another carried a splendid pair of antlers. Nelly took hold of Rob's hand and walked very cautiously nearer the dead deer.

"Oh, Rob!" she said, "it's a real deer. There is a picture of one in my Geography with just such horns as these."

Nelly was carrying Mrs. Napoleon hugged up very tight in her arms; but she had not observed that, in the jostling of the crowd, Mrs. Napoleon had somehow turned her head round as if she were looking backward over Nelly's shoulder. Neither had she observed that two little girls were following closely behind her, jabbering German as fast as they could, and pointing to the doll. Presently, she felt her gown pulled gently. She turned round, and there were the two little girls, both with outstretched hands, talking as fast as magpies, and much more unintelligibly. Each of them took hold of Nelly's gown again, and made signs to her that she should let them take the doll. They looked so eager that it seemed as if they would snatch the doll out of her hands: the words they spoke sounded so thick and strange that it half frightened Nelly. "Oh, dear me, Rob!" she exclaimed; "do tell them to go away. Go away, good little girls, go away!" she said, pleadingly. "I can't let you take her."

"Clear out!" said Rob, roughly, taking hold of one of them by the shoulder and giving her a shove. No sooner had the words passed his lips than he felt himself lifted by the nape of his neck as if he had been a little puppy: he was in the hand's of a great red-faced German, who looked like a scarlet giant to poor Rob, as he gazed up in his face. This was the father of the two little girls; he had seen the shove that Rob gave his little Wilhelmina, and he was in a great rage; he shook Rob back and forth, and cuffed his ears, all the time talking very loud in German. All he said was:—

"You are a good-for-nothing: I will teach you manners, that you do not push little girls who are doing you no harm;" but it sounded in the German language like something very dreadful.

Poor Nelly clung to him with one hand, and tried to stop his beating Rob.

"Oh, please don't whip my brother, sir!" she cried. "He did not mean to hurt the little girl. She was going to snatch my doll away from me."

But the angry German shook Nelly off as if she had been a little fly that lighted on his arm. Rob did not cry out, nor speak a word. He was horribly frightened, but he was too angry to cry. He said afterwards:—

"I thought he was going to kill me; but I just made up my mind I wouldn't speak a single word if he did."

All this that I have been telling you didn't take much more than a minute; but it seemed to poor Nelly a thousand years. She was crying, and the little German girls were crying too: they did not mean to do any harm, and they did not want the little boy whipped. Some rough men and women who were looking on began to laugh, and one man called out:—

"Go it, Dutchy, go it!"

Mr. March, who was just walking up the platform, heard the noise; and, when he looked up to see what it meant, what should he see but his own Rob held away up in the air, in the powerful grip of this tall man, and being soundly cuffed about the ears. Mr. March sprang forward, and, taking hold of Rob with one hand, caught the angry man's uplifted arm in the other.

"Stop, sir," he said; "this is my little boy. What has he done? Leave him to me. What has he done?"

"Nothing, papa," called poor Rob, the tears coming into his eyes at the sight of a protector; "nothing except push that ugly little yellow-haired girl: I guess she is his; she was going to snatch Nell's doll."

The German set Rob down; and, turning towards Mr. March, began to pour out a torrent of words. Luckily, Mr. March understood most of what he said, and could speak to him in his own language. So he explained to him that his little daughters had tried to take Nelly's doll away from her, and that Rob had only intended to protect his sister, as was quite right and proper he should do. As soon as the man understood this, he turned at once to his little girls who stood by crying, and asked them a short question in German.

They sobbed out, "ja, ja" (that means "yes, yes"). In less than a minute he caught up first the elder one, just as he had caught up Rob, and boxed her ears; then the smaller one, and cuffed her also; and set them both down on the ground, as if he were used to swinging children up in the air and boxing their ears every day. Then he turned to Rob, and taking him by the hand, said to Mr. March,—

"Explain to your little boy that I ask his pardon. He was doing the right thing: he is a gentleman; and I ask that he accept this horn from me and from my very bad little girls."

So saying, he took out of a great wallet that hung across his back a beautiful little powder horn. It was a horn of the chamois, the beautiful wild deer that lives in the mountains in Switzerland. It was as black as ebony, and had a fine pattern cut on it, like a border round the top; then it had a scarlet cord and silver buckles, to fasten it across the shoulders. Rob's eyes glistened with delight as he stretched out his hand for it.

"Oh, thank you, thank you!" he said. "Oh, papa! please thank him, and tell him I don't mind the whipping a bit now. And," he added, "please tell him, too, that I didn't mean to shove his little girl hard, only just to keep her off Nell."

Mr. March interpreted Rob's speech to the German, who nodded pleasantly and walked off, leading his two little sobbing children by the hand. He was so tall that the little girls looked like little elves by his side, and he looked like the picture of the Giant with his seven-league boots on. When Rob turned to show his beautiful powder horn to Nelly, she was nowhere to be seen.

"Why, where is Nell, papa?" he exclaimed.

Mr. March looked around anxiously, but could see nothing of her. They hurried back into the waiting-room, and there to their great relief they saw Nelly sitting by her mother's side. Rob rushed up to her, holding up his powder horn, and exclaiming,—

"Why, Nell, what made you come away? That old thrasher was a splendid fellow: see what he gave me, as soon as papa made him understand; and he cuffed those girls well, I tell you,—most as hard as he did me. Why, Nell, what's the matter?" Rob suddenly observed that Nelly was crying.

"Don't talk to Nelly just now," said Mrs. March: "she is in trouble." And she put her arm round Nelly tenderly.

"But what is it, mamma?" exclaimed Rob; "tell me. Is she hurt?"

"What is it, Sarah?" said Mr. March. By this time Nelly was sobbing hard, and her head was buried on her mother's shoulder. Mrs. March pointed to Nelly's lap: there lay a shapeless and dirty little bundle, which Nelly held grasped feebly in one hand. It was the remains of Mrs. Napoleon. The blue waterproof was all torn and grimed with dirt; a broken wax arm hung out at one side; and when Rob cautiously lifted a fold of the waterproof, there came into view a shocking sight: poor Mrs. Napoleon's face, or rather what had been her face, without a single feature to be seen in it,—just a round ball of dirty, crumbling wax, with the pretty yellow curls all matted in it. Mr. March could not help smiling at the sight; luckily, Nelly did not see him.

"Why, how did that happen?" he said.

"What a shame!" exclaimed Rob. "Say, Nell, you shall have my powder horn;" and he thrust it into her hand. Nelly shook her head and pushed it away, but did not speak. Her heart was too full.

Then Mrs. March told them in a low tone how it had happened. When Nelly caught hold of the German's arm, trying to stop his beating Rob, she had forgotten all about Mrs. Napoleon, and let her fall to the ground. Nobody saw her, and, in the general scuffle, the doll had been trampled under foot. Really, if one had not been so sorry for Nelly, one could not help laughing at the spectacle. The scarlet feather and the bright blue cloak, and the golden curls, and the dark blue veils, and the red and white wax, all mixed up together so that you would have hardly known that it was a doll at all,—except that one blue eye was left whole, with a little bit of the red cheek under it. This made the whole wreck look still worse.

"Our first railroad accident," said Mrs. March, laughingly. Nelly sobbed harder than ever.

"Hush," said Mr. March, in a low tone to his wife. "Don't make light of it."

"Nelly, dear," he said, taking hold of the doll gently, "shall not papa throw the poor dolly away? You don't want to look at her any more."

"Oh, no, no!" said Nelly, lifting up the bundle, and hugging it tighter.

"Very well, dear," replied her father, "you shall keep it as long as you like. But let me pin poor dolly up tight, so that nobody can see how she is hurt."

Nelly gave the doll up without a word, and her kind papa rolled the little waterproof cloak tight round the body and arms; then he doubled up the blue veil and pinned it many thicknesses thick all round the head; and then he took a clean dark-blue and white silk handkerchief of his own and put outside all the veil, and made it into a snug little parcel, that nobody would have known was a dolly at all.

"There, Nelly," he said, putting it in her lap, "there is dolly, all rolled up, so that nobody can look at her."

Nelly took the sad little bundle, and laid it across her knees.

"Can she ever be mended, papa?" she said.

"No, dear, I think not," said Mr. March; "I think the sooner you put her out of your sight the better; but now we must go into the cars."

Poor Nelly! she walked slowly along, carrying the blue and white package as if it were a coffin,—as indeed it was, a kind of coffin, for a very dead dolly.

As they were going into the car, Mr. March said to his wife:—

"There is no drawing-room in the sleeping-car which goes through to-day. I have had to take two sections."

Mrs. March had never travelled in a sleeping-car before, and she did not know how much nicer the little room was than the "sections." So she replied: "They'll do just as well, won't they?"

"I think you will not like them quite so well," replied Mr. March; "you cannot be by yourself with the children. But it is only for one night; we will make the best of it. There are our sections, one right opposite the other; so you will not have strangers opposite you."

They put their lunch-basket and bags and bundles down on the floor, and sat down on the two sofas, facing each other. Nelly put her blue and white parcel in one corner of the sofa, lay down with her head on it, and was soon fast asleep. There were tears on her cheeks.

"Poor child!" said Mr. March; "this is her first real grief."

"I'm glad I ain't a girl," said Rob, bluntly; "I don't believe in dolls, do you, papa?"

Mr. March answered Rob's question by another.

"Do you believe in babies, Rob?"

"Why, of course, papa! What a funny question! I think babies are real nice. They're alive, you know."

"Yes," said his father; "but dolls are just the same to little girls that babies are to grown-up women. Nelly felt just like a mother to Mrs. Napoleon. She was a very good little mother too."

"Yes," said Mrs. March; "she was. I am very sorry for her."

"I'm real glad Deacon Plummer and Mrs. Plummer weren't here," said Rob.

"Why, why, Rob?" said his mother.

(Deacon and Mrs. Plummer had left the train at Quincy to spend a week with a son of theirs who lived there. They were to join the Marches later, in Denver.)

"Oh, because she'd have said: 'This is—cough—cough—providential.' What does providential mean, anyhow, papa? You never say it. Does it make you cough and sneeze? Mrs. Plummer is always saying it about every thing."

Mr. and Mrs. March laughed so hard at this they could not speak for some minutes. Then Mr. March said:—

"You must not speak so, Rob;" but, before he had finished his sentence, he had to stop again, and laugh harder than before. "Deacon and Mrs. Plummer are going to be the greatest help to us, and they are as good and kind as they can be."

"Yes, I like her crullers first-rate," said Rob. "What does providential mean, papa?"

Mr. March looked puzzled.

"I hardly know how to tell you, Rob. Mrs. Plummer means by it that God made the thing happen, whatever it is that she is speaking of, on purpose for her accommodation: that is one way of using the word. I do not believe that doctrine: so I never use the word, because it would be understood to mean something I don't believe in."

"I should think God'd be too busy," said Rob, as if he were thinking very hard; "he couldn't remember everybody, could he?"

"Not in that way, I think," said Mr. March; "but in another way I think it is true that he never forgets anybody. It is something like my garden, Rob. You know I've got parsnips, and carrots, and beets, and potatoes,—oh! a dozen of things, all growing together. Now I never forget my garden. I know when it is time to have the corn hoed; and I know, when there hasn't been any rain for a long time, that I must water it. But I don't think about each particular carrot or parsnip in the bed: I could hardly count them if I tried. Yet I mean to take very good care of my garden, and never let them suffer for any thing; and if any one of my vegetables were to be thirsty, if it could speak, it ought to ask me to give it some water."

I am afraid Rob did not listen attentively to this long explanation. He never thought of any one thing very long, as you know. And he was busy now watching all the people pour into the car. There was a little girl, only about Nelly's age, who had to be carried on a little mattress. She could not walk. Something was the matter with her spine. Her father and mother were with her. And there was a lady with a sweet face, who was too ill to sit up at all. The sofas in her "section" were made up into a bed as soon as she came in; she had a doctor and a nurse with her.

Then there were several couples, who had two or three children with them; and one poor lady who was travelling all alone with five children, and the largest only twelve years old; and there were some Englishmen with guns and fishing-rods and spy-glasses and almost every thing you could think of that could be cased in leather and carried on a journey,—one of them even had a bath-tub, a big, round bath-tub, in addition to every thing else. He had a man-servant with him who carried all these things, or else he never could have got on at all. The man's name was Felix. That is a Latin word which means "happy," but I don't think this poor fellow was happy at all. He was a Frenchman. I don't know how he came to be an Englishman's servant, but I suppose the Englishman had lived a great while in France, and had found him there. Felix's master always talked French with him; so Felix had not learned much English, and it would have made you laugh to see him clap his hand to his head when anybody said any thing he could not understand. He would pound his head as if he could drive the meaning in that way; and then he would pull his thin hair; and then sometimes he would turn round and round as fast as a top two or three times. When he came into the cars loaded down with the guns and the rods and the bundles and the bath-tub, his master would tell him to put them down in the corner; then the porter would come along and say:—

"Look here! you can't have all these things in here," and then Felix would say:—

"Vat dat you say, sare?"

Then the porter would repeat it; and Felix would say again:—

"Vat dat you say, sare?"

And then the porter would get angry, and pick up some of the things, and lay them on Felix's back, and tell him to carry them off; and there Felix would stand stock-still, with the things on his back, till his master appeared. Then he would pour out all his story of his troubles in French, and the Englishman would be very angry with the porter, and say that he would have his things where he pleased; and the porter would say he should not. He must put them under his berth or in the baggage car; and poor Felix would stand all the while looking first in the porter's face and then in his master's, just like a dog that is waiting for his master to tell him which way to run for a thing. Great drops of perspiration would stand on his forehead, and his face would be as red as if it were August: he was so worried and confused. Poor Felix! he was one of the drollest sights in the whole journey.

The people kept pouring in.

"Mamma, where are they all to sleep?" whispered Rob.

"I'm sure I don't know, Rob," she answered.

At last the train moved off, and the different families arranged themselves in their own sections, and it seemed a little less crowded. But there were not seats enough for all the children, and some of them were obliged to sit on the floor in the middle of the aisle. The lady who had five children had only engaged one berth: that is half of a section.

"How do you expect to manage about sleeping?" said Mrs. March to her.

"Oh, that's easy enough," said she. "We've slept so all the way from New York. I put the three little ones crosswise at the foot, and the two others lie 'longside of me."

Mrs. March did not reply to this; but she thought to herself, "I'd like to see those babies after they are all packed away for the night."

At noon the train stopped for the passengers to take their dinner at a little station. More than half the people in the car went out. Then the porter—the new porter's name was Ben—brought in little tables and put them up between the seats for the people who had their own lunch-baskets and did not want to go out to dinner. In the next section to the Marches were a man and his wife with three children. They had a big coffee-pot full of coffee, and one tin cup to drink it from. They had loaves of brown bread, a big cheese, and a bunch of onions. As soon as they opened their basket, the smell of the onions and the cheese filled the car.

"Ugh!" said Rob; "where does this horrible smell come from?"

Luckily the people who owned the cheese and the onions did not hear him, and before he had time to say any more, his mother whispered to him to be quiet; but Rob's face was one of such disgust, that nobody could have looked at him without seeing that he was very uncomfortable. Mrs. March felt as uncomfortable as Rob did: but she knew that those people had just the same right to have cheese and onions on their table that she had to have chocolate and orange marmalade on hers; so she opened one of the windows wide to let in fresh air, and went on with her dinner. As soon as the spirit-lamp began to burn, the children in the next section exclaimed aloud: "Oh, what is that? what is that?" They had never seen any thing of the kind before. The two eldest, who were boys, jumped down from their seat, each carrying a big piece of bread and of cheese, and came crowding around Mrs. March to look at the lamp. Mrs. March was a very gentle and polite woman, but she could not help being vexed at these ill-mannered children.

"Go away, little boys," she said: "I am very busy now. I am afraid you will upset the lamp, and get burned."

Then she looked at the father and mother, hoping they would call their children back. But they took no notice of them: they went on eating their bread and cheese and onions; and, at every fresh onion they sliced, a fresh whiff of the strong, disagreeable odor went through the car. Mr. March had been out to the eating-house, to get some milk. Mrs. March had brought a big square glass bottle, which held three pints; and, whenever they stopped at an eating-house, Mr. March bought fresh milk to fill it, and this was a great addition to their bill of fare. He came into the car at this moment, bringing the milk bottle, and as soon as he opened the car door, he exclaimed, as Rob had done:—

"Ugh!" but in a second more he saw what had made the odor, and he said no more. As he handed the milk to his wife, she said in a low tone:—

"Could we go anywhere else to eat our dinner, Robert?"

Mr. March looked all around the car and shook his head.

"No," he said; "every seat is taken, and at any moment the people may come back. It is nearly time now for the train to start. We will make a hasty meal; perhaps we can do better at night."

Rob and Nelly were very quiet. They did not like the two strange boys who stood close to their seat staring at them, and at every thing which was on the table. Rob whispered to Nelly:—

"'Tain't half so nice as it was in the little room: is it, Nell?"

"No," said Nelly.

"Shouldn't you think they'd be ashamed to stare so?" continued Rob, making a gesture over his shoulder towards their uninvited guests.

"Yes," said Nelly. "It's real rude."

Still the boys stood immovable at Mrs. March's knee. At last one of them lifted his head, and, saying "What keeps that thing on there?" pointed to the saucepan standing on the little tripod of the lamp. Just at that moment, his brother accidentally hit his arm and made his hand go farther than he meant: it hit the saucepan and knocked it over; down went the spirit-lamp, all the alcohol ran out and took fire, and for a few minutes there was a great hubbub I assure you. Mr. March seized their heavy woollen lap-robe, and threw it on the floor above the burning alcohol, and stamped out the flames; and nobody was burned. But the nice chocolate was all lost; it went running down a little muddy stream, way out to the door; and the tumbler which had the butter in it fell to the floor and was broken; and the nice slices of white bread which Mrs. March had just cut were all soaked in alcohol and spoiled; and altogether it was a wretched mess, and all because two little boys had not been taught how to behave properly. They ran off as hard as they could go, you may be sure, back into their own seat, as soon as the mischief was done; and, if you will believe it, their father and mother never even looked round or took notice of all the confusion that was going on. They sat and munched their onions and brown bread and cheese as if they were in their own house all alone. One sees very queer and disagreeable people in travelling. By the time Mr. and Mrs. March had put out the fire, and picked up all the things and wiped up the chocolate as well as they could with a newspaper, the people who had gone out to get their dinners, all came pouring back, and the cars began to move.

"Oh, dear me!" said Mrs. March: "we shall have to go without our lunch now till tea-time. Here, children, just drink this milk, and eat a piece of bread, and at tea-time, perhaps, we'll have better luck."

"I don't care," said Rob; "I ain't hungry a bit: it's all so horrid in here."

"Neither am I," said Nelly. "Can't we have a little room all to ourselves to-morrow, papa?"

"No, Nell," said her father: "no more little room for us on this journey; this car goes through to Denver. We can't change. But it is only one night and one day: we can stand it."

"I'm glad part of it is night," said Nelly; "we'll be by ourselves when we're in bed."

"Yes," said Mrs. March. "You are to sleep with me, and Rob with papa; and we'll be all shut in behind the curtains. I think that will be quite comfortable."

When the train stopped for the passengers to take supper, Mr. and Mrs. March decided that they would go out too, and not try any more experiments with the spirit-lamp while they had such dangerous and disagreeable companions in the next seat.

Nelly and Rob clung to their father's hand as they entered the eating-room. There were four long tables, all filled with people eating as fast as they could eat. Nearly all the men had their hats on their heads, and the noise of the knives and forks sounded like the clatter of machinery. The train was to stop only twenty minutes, and everybody was trying to eat all he could in so short a time. Mr. and Mrs. March, being very gentle and quiet people, did not hurry the waiters as the other people did; and so it happened that their supper was not brought to them for some time. Nelly had eaten only a few mouthfuls of her bread and milk when there was a general rush from all the tables, and the room was emptied in a minute. The conductor of the train was sitting at the table with the Marches, and he said kindly to them:—

"Don't hurry; there is plenty of time; five minutes yet."

"Five minutes!" said Rob, scornfully: "I couldn't take five mouthfuls in five minutes. I'm going to carry mine into the cars." And he began spreading bread and butter.

"A good idea, Rob," said his mother. And she did the same thing; and, as the conductor called "All aboard!" the March family entered the car, each carrying two slices of bread and butter.

"Not much better luck with our supper than with our dinner, Sarah," said Mr. March; "I think you'll have to open your lunch-basket, after all."

"Oh, don't ask me to!" said Mrs. March. "The children have had a good drink of milk. We can get along till morning. I would rather go hungry than take out the things with all those people looking on. We can go to bed early: that will be a comfort."

Mistaken Mrs. March! They sat on the steps of the cars for half an hour to watch the sunset. The brakeman had found out that Mr. March was so careful and Nelly and Rob were such good children that he let them sit there as often as they liked. Nelly loved dearly to sit between her father's knees on the upper step and look down at the ground as it seemed to fly away so swiftly under the wheels. Sometimes they went so fast that the ground did not look like ground at all. It looked like a smooth, striped sheet of brown and green paper being drawn swiftly under the car wheels. It seemed to Rob and Nelly as if they must be going out over the edge of the world. All they could see was sky and ground.

"This is the way it looks when you are out in the middle of the ocean, Nell," said her father; "just the great round sky over your head, and the great flat sea underneath: only the sea is never still as the ground is; that is the only difference."

"Still!" cried Rob. "You don't call this ground under us still, do you? It's going as fast as lightning all the time."

"No, Rob! it is we who are going; the ground is still," said his mother; "but it does look just as if the ground were flying one way and we the other. It makes me almost dizzy to look down."

Pretty soon the moon came up in the east. It was almost full, and, as it came up slowly in sight, it looked like a great circle of fire. Rob and Nelly both cried out, when they first saw it:—

"Oh, mamma! oh, papa! see that fire!"

In a very few minutes it was up in full sight, and then they saw what it was.

"Dear me! only the moon, after all," said Rob; "I hoped it was a big fire."

CHAPTER IV

A NIGHT IN A SLEEPING-CAR

The moonlight was so beautiful that Mrs. March did not like to go back into the car; and Rob and Nelly begged so hard to sit up, that she let them stay long past their bedtime. At last she exclaimed:—

"Come, come! this won't do! We must go to bed," and she opened the car door. As soon as she looked in she started back, so that she nearly knocked Mr. March and Nelly off the platform.

"Why, what has happened?" she said.

Mr. March laughed.

"Oh, nothing," he said: "this is the way a sleeping-car always looks at night."

Curtains were let down on each side the aisle its whole length. It was very dark, and the aisle looked very narrow. Not a human being was in sight.

"Where are our sections?" said Mrs. March.

"These are ours, I think," said Mr. March, pulling open a curtain on the left.

"Let my curtain alone," called somebody from inside, "Go away."

Mr. March had opened the wrong curtain.

"Oh, I beg your pardon, madam," he said, much mortified that he should have broken open a lady's bedroom.

Mrs. March and Rob and Nelly stood close together in the middle of the aisle, at their wits' end. They did not dare to open another curtain, for fear it should be somebody's else bedroom, and not their own.

"I'll call Ben," said Mr. March; "he'll know."

But Ben was nowhere to be found. At last they found him sound asleep in a little state-room at the end of the car.

"Ben, come show us which are our sections," said Mr. March.

Ben was very sleepy. He came stumbling down the aisle, rubbing his eyes.

"Reckon there is your berths; I made 'em up all ready for you," said Ben, and pulled open the very curtain Mr. March had opened before.

"Oh! don't open that one; there's a lady in there," cried Mrs. March; but she was too late. Ben had thrown the curtains wide open.

The same angry voice as before called out:—

"I wish you'd let my curtain alone. What are you about?"

"Done made a mistake this time, sure," said Ben, composedly drawing the curtains together again; but not before Mrs. March and Nelly and Rob had had time to see into the bed, and had seen that it held the mother with five children. There they all lay as snug as you please: the three little ones packed like herrings in a box, across the foot of the bed, and the two others on the inside; and the mother lying on the outer edge almost in the aisle. As Ben pushed back the curtains, she muttered:—

"There ain't any room to spare in this berth, if that's what you're looking for."

Rob and Nelly gave a smothered laugh at this.

"Hush, children!" whispered Mrs. March. "You wouldn't like to be laughed at."

"Oh, mamma, it's so funny!" said Rob. "We can't help it."

Mrs. March did not think it funny at all. She began to be in despair about the night.

The very next section to the one with the five children was one of Mr. March's, and luckily those were the next curtains Ben opened.

"Here you are! you're all right!" he said, cheerfully. "Here's all your things: I done piled 'em up first-rate for you."

Piled up they were indeed. The lunch-basket, the strapped bundle of blankets, the overcoats, the water-proofs, the leather bags, all one above the other on one bed.

"Where are we to sleep, mamma?" exclaimed Nelly.

"On top," said Rob. "Hurrah! hurrah!" and he was about to jump on the top of the pile.

"Be quiet, Rob," said his father: "we must go to bed as quietly as we can, and not wake people up. We ought to have come earlier. Almost everybody is asleep, I think."

At this point, rose two great snores, so close that Mrs. March started.

"Mercy!" she exclaimed. "How that frightened me!"

Snore! snore! snore! The sounds came as regularly as the striking of a clock: they were most uncommonly loud snores. Mr. March looked at his wife and smiled. Mrs. March did not smile in return: she did not like this state of things at all.

At last they had sorted out the things they needed, and the rest of the things they pushed under their berths,—all but the big lunch-basket: Mr. March had to carry that out to the end of the car, and set it by the stove. Then Mr. March and Rob climbed into their bed, and shut the curtains; and Mrs. March and Nelly climbed into theirs, and shut their curtains, and began to undress. Presently, Mr. March called across in a whisper:—

"Wife, what shall I do with Rob's clothes?"

Mrs. March was at that moment trying to find some place to put Nelly's and hers.

"I'm sure I don't know," she replied. "There isn't a sign of a hook here to hang any thing on."

"Nor here," replied Mr. March: "I'll leave them all in a pile on the foot of the bed."

"That'll do very well for a man's clothes," thought Mrs. March; "but I must hang up our gowns and skirts." At last, she had a bright thought. She stood up on the edge of the bed, and hooked the skirts over the rod the curtains were swung from. It was all she could do to reach it; and, just as she was hooking the last skirt on, the car gave a lurch, and out she fell, out into the aisle, and across it, through the curtains of Mr. March's berth, right on to his bed.

"Goodness alive, Sarah! is this you?" he exclaimed, jumping up, frightened. He was just falling asleep.

"Well, I believe so," she said: "I'm not sure."

"Oh, mamma, did it hurt you?" called Nelly, anxiously.

"No, no, dear," replied her mother. "I'm coming right back." But, before she went, she whispered in her husband's ear:—

"Robert March, I think a sleeping-car is the most detestable place I ever got into in my life. Suppose I'd tumbled into some stranger's berth, as I did into yours just now."

Mr. March only laughed, and Mrs. March heard him laughing to himself after she had gone back, and it did not make her feel any pleasanter to hear this. At last she and Nelly were both undressed and in bed. Their clothes and dressing-cases and travelling-bags were piled up on their feet.

"You mustn't kick, Nelly," said Mrs. March. "If you do, you'll upset all the things out on the floor."

"I'm afraid I always kick, mamma," replied honest Nelly. "I won't while I'm awake; but when I'm asleep I don't know."

Nelly was fast asleep in two minutes; but Mrs. March could not sleep. The air in the car was so close and hot it made her head ache. She had pinned her curtains tight together before she lay down, so that nobody could look in on her as she had on the poor lady with five children. Now she sat up in bed and unpinned them, and looked out into the aisle. It was dark: the car was dashing along at a tremendous rate; the air was most disagreeable, and there were at least six people snoring different snores.

"I can't stand this. I must open the window at the foot of the berth," said Mrs. March. So she crept down and tried to open it. She had not observed in the daytime how the windows were fastened: she fumbled about in the dark till she found the fastening; she could not move it; she took the skin off her knuckles; she wrenched her shoulder; all this time sitting cross-legged on the bed. At last she gave a shove with all her strength, and the window flew up: in one second, an icy blast blew in full of smoke and cinders. "This won't do, either," said Mrs. March; and she tried to get the window down. This took longer than to get it up; finally, in despair, she propped it open about two inches with one of her boots; then she sank back exhausted, and came down hard on her watch and broke the crystal: then she had a difficult time picking up all the little bits of glass in the dark, and then, after she had picked them up, she did not know what to do with them. There was some stiff paper in her travelling-bag, if she could only get at it; at last she found it, but, in drawing it out, she knocked the cork out of the hartshorn bottle, and over went the bottle in the bag, all the hartshorn poured out, and such a strong smell of hartshorn filled the berth it waked Nelly up.

"Oh, mamma! what is it? and what smells so?" she said, sleepily.

"Only hartshorn, dear," said her mother, in a despairing tone. "I've upset it all over every thing. Go to sleep, dear: it won't smell so very long."

Nelly dozed off again, saying: "I'm going to get up just as soon as it's light. I hate this bed: don't you, mamma?"

"Yes, Nell, I do," said Mrs. March; "I would rather have sat up all night: but I am so tired and sleepy now I shall go to sleep, I think."

When Nelly waked, it was just beginning to be light. Her mother was sound asleep. Nelly leaned over her, and looked out into the aisle. Nobody was up except Ben, who was blacking boots at the end of the aisle.

"I'll get up as still as I can, and get all dressed before mamma wakes up," thought Nelly. "Poor mamma! What a time she had last night!"

At that moment, as Nelly turned her head, she saw a sight which so frightened her that, in spite of herself, she screamed. "What is it, Nell?" asked her mother, waking instantly. Nelly could not speak, but pointed to the wall at the back of their berth. Mrs. March sat upright in bed, and gazed with astonishment and alarm almost as great as Nelly's. What could it mean? There, in the smooth panel of black walnut, which was almost as shining as a looking-glass, was the reflection of a man's face. It was the face of the man who had been eating the cheese and brown bread and onions. He had a red handkerchief tied about his head for a nightcap; and he was sound asleep, with his mouth wide open. While Mrs. March and Nelly sat gazing breathlessly at this unaccountable sight, the head slowly turned on the pillow, and a hand came up and rubbed one eye. Nelly nearly screamed again. Her mother put her hand quickly over her mouth.

"Hush, Nell!" she said; "do not be frightened. I see how it is."

The partitions which separated the sleeping-berths one from the other did not come up close to the wall of the car. There was room to put your hand through between. The black walnut lining of the car was so polished that it reflected like a looking-glass; so each person could see, in the back of his berth, the face of the person who was lying in the berth next before his.

"Goodness!" exclaimed Mrs. March; "if we can see into that berth, they can see into this one;" and she seized one of the pillows, and set it up against the crack. Then she looked down, and saw a similar opening at the foot of the berth. This one she stopped up with another pillow.

"There, Nell," she said, "now we can dress without being overlooked."

Nelly did not quite understand how these shining black walnut panels could have acted like looking-glasses, and she was a little afraid still that the queer, shaggy face with the red silk nightcap would glare out at her again; but she hurried on her clothes, and in a few minutes was ready to go to the little wash-room which was provided for ladies at the end of the car.

"We are so early," said Mrs. March, "that I think we will be the first ones there."

Ah, how mistaken she was! When they reached the little room, there stood two women waiting for their turn at the wash-stand; a third was washing her face. As Mrs. March and Nelly appeared, one of those who were waiting called out:—

"Come in. Don't go away. If you do, you'll lose your turn: there'll be lots more here directly."

"Thank you," said Mrs. March: "my daughter and I will wait there, just outside the door. We will not intrude upon you."

At this, all three of the women laughed, and one said:

"H'm! there ain't much question of intrudin' in these sleepin'-cars. It's just a kind o' big bedroom, that's all."

Mrs. March smiled, and said: "Yes, I think so;" and the women went on talking. They were relating their experiences in the night. One of them said:—

"Well, I got along very well till somebody opened a window, and then I thought I should ha' froze to death; but my husband he called the conductor up, and they shut all the ventilators up; but I just shivered all night. Real good soap this is: ain't it?"

Mrs. March looked warningly at Nelly, who was just about to speak. "Keep quiet, Nell," she said. But Nelly whispered: "Do you suppose that was our window, mamma?"

"I dare say," answered Mrs. March, in a still lower whisper: "keep still, Nell."

"Well, I wa'n't too cold," said the woman at the washbowl. She had her false teeth in her hand, and was washing them under the little slow stream running from the faucet: so she could not speak very distinctly. "Well, I wa'n't too cold," she said, "but I'll tell you what did happen to me. In the middle o' the night I felt somethin' against my head, right on the very top on't; and what do you think it was? 'Twas the feet of the man in the next section to our'n. 'Well,' says I, 'this is more'n I can stand;' and I gave 'em a real shove. I reckon he waked up, for I didn't feel 'em no more."

At this Nelly had to run away. She could not keep the laugh back any longer. And Mrs. March thought it better to let her go, for she did not know what might be coming next in the conversation of these women. At the other end of the car, Nelly saw Rob, carrying something done up in newspaper in his hand. She ran after him. He put his finger on his lips as she drew near him, and made signs to her not to speak. She could not imagine what he was carrying. He went very fast to the outside door of the car, opened it, and threw the parcel out.

"What was it, Rob?" said Nell, eagerly.

"I won't tell you," said Rob: "you'll tell."

"Oh! I won't; I won't; indeed I won't," said Nell.

"Honest Indian?" said Rob.

"Honest Indian," said Nelly.

This was the strongest form of pledge which Rob and Nelly ever gave. It was like a sort of oath among the children in Mayfield. If a child broke his promise after he had said "Honest Indian," there was nothing too bad for him.

"Well," said Rob, coming very close to Nelly, and speaking in a low whisper, "it was those people's string of onions!"

"Why, Rob!" cried Nelly, in a horrified tone, "why, Rob! that's stealing. How could you?"

"'Tain't stealing either, Nell March," said Rob, stoutly; "I haven't got 'em. Stealing is taking things. I haven't got them. I didn't want the old, horrid things. I just threw them away. That ain't taking."

Nelly still looked distressed. "Papa wouldn't like it," she said, "nor mamma either. They were all those people had to eat, except bread and cheese. Oh, Rob! I think it was awful mean in you."

"I don't care: I wish I hadn't told you. I don't think it was mean. It was good enough for them for making such a smell in the cars. I heard some of the gentlemen saying they hadn't any business with onions in the car,—that the conductor ought to make them throw them away. Anyhow, Nell, you promised not to tell."

"Yes," said Nell, "but I never once thought of its being such a thing as this. What do you suppose they'll do? They might have you took up and put in prison, Rob."

Rob looked a little disturbed, but he replied bravely:

"Oh, pshaw! I don't know whose onions they were anyhow. I just found them rolling round on the floor, and I picked them up: they weren't anybody's when they were out loose in the car. I don't care: we won't have such a horrid smell here to-day."

Nelly walked away looking very unhappy. She disliked the smell of onions as much as Rob did; but she would rather have had the string of onions in her lap all day than have had Rob do such a thing as this; and she felt sure it would all be known, somehow, before the day came to an end,—as you will see that it was.

After everybody had got up, and the beds and pillows and blankets were all packed away in the little cupboards overhead, and the car was put in order for the day, the people who had lunch-baskets began to eat their breakfasts. Nelly sat very still in her seat, and watched to see what would happen when the onions were found to be missing. Rob had walked away, and stood at the farther door of the car. He seemed to be very busy looking out at the scenery.

Mrs. March had a good little breakfast of boiled eggs and bread and butter and tea and milk, all ready on the table.

"Call Rob," she said to Nelly. Nelly walked to the end of the car, and said:—

"Come, Rob. Mamma's got breakfast all ready."

Without looking round, Rob whispered:—

"Have they missed 'em?"

"I don't know: I haven't heard any thing," answered Nelly, in the same low tone. And they walked back together, Nelly looking much more anxious than Rob did. Mrs. March noticed their grave faces as they took their seats, and she said:—

"You are tired: aren't you, children?"

"Oh, no, mamma!" they both exclaimed; "we aren't a bit tired!"

But their faces did not brighten. If the whole truth were told, it must be owned that they were both very unhappy. The more Rob thought about those onions, the more he felt afraid that it was stealing to have thrown them away; and this made him wretched enough.

And the more Nelly thought about it, the surer she felt that Rob was going to get into trouble before the thing was done with. Neither of them ate much breakfast; they were both listening to what was going on in the next section. They could hear such sentences as:—

"I know I left 'em here last night."

"Perhaps they went out of the window."

"They couldn't: they were on the floor."

"That black rascal's got 'em, you may be sure."

At this last sentence, Nelly gave Rob a push under the table with her foot, and his face turned very red.

In a moment more, Ben entered the car; as he was passing the Marches' table, the angry man from the next section called out, in a very rude way:—

"Here, you nigger, what'd you do with my onions?"

Ben stood stock-still, he was so astonished.

"Ungyuns!" he exclaimed; "I never seed no ungyuns."

"Yes, you did! You must have: you've stowed 'em away somewhere. Now jest you pass 'em out, or I'll report you."

Ben had never been accused of stealing before. He looked the man full in the face, and said:—

"You can do all the reportin' yer want to, mister. I never seed your ungyuns." And he was about to pass on; but the man was so angry, and so sure that Ben must have taken his onions, that he stood in the middle of the aisle, right in Ben's way, and would not let him pass.

"Hand 'em over now," he said, in the most insulting tone; "hand 'em over."

Mr. March, who had been watching the scene with some amusement, was very much astonished, on looking at Rob at this moment, to see his cheeks flushed, his lips parted as if he were about to speak.

"Why, Rob," he said, "do you know where the onions are?"

"No," said Rob.

Nelly gave an involuntary gasp, under her breath, "Oh!"

Mr. March looked at her in still greater surprise.

"Do you, Nell?" he said.

Nelly did not reply, but looked at Rob, who said:—

"I don't know where they are now." But his expression was a very guilty one.

"Rob!" said his father, sternly, "you know something about those onions: tell me this moment."

Nelly clasped her hands tight, and gave a little cry, "Oh, Rob!"

Now that the final moment had come, Rob spoke up like a man.

"Papa, I threw them out of the car door,—they made such a smell. I found them close to our berth when I first got up, and they smelled so horrid I threw them away. Perhaps they weren't this man's onions," said poor Rob, clutching at a last hope.

Mr. March could hardly believe his ears.

"You! You took what did not belong to you, and then threw it away! Why, Rob! I am ashamed of you! Why, Rob, I wouldn't have believed it!" exclaimed Mr. March. "You will pay for those onions out of your allowance." And he looked at Rob more sternly than he had ever done in his life.

"Come, now, immediately," he continued, "and apologize to the man." And he took Rob by the hand and led him to the next seat.

"I am very sorry to tell you, sir," he said, "that my little boy here took your onions and threw them away. He shall buy some for you at the very first station where we can."

"What'd yer throw 'em away for?" said the man, looking curiously and not unkindly at Rob, whose face was enough to make anybody sorry for him.

"Because I hate the smell of them so," said Rob, sturdily; "and my mamma hates them too; and I found them rolling round on the floor, by our berth; and I just picked them up and threw them away. I didn't think about their being anybody's,—not until afterwards," he added; "and I'm very sorry, sir. I'll buy you some more out of my own money."

Mr. March smiled at this little explanation: he saw that Rob had not really intended to do wrong.

"No, no, my boy, you needn't do that," said the man; "we're going to get off before dinner time; an' we've got a bin full o' onions at home. I expect they do smell kind o' strong to folks that ain't used to 'em, but they're mighty healthy."

Rob walked back to his seat somewhat relieved, but still very much ashamed. He glanced up in his mother's face. She looked mortified; still there was a twinkle in her eyes: in the bottom of her heart, she sympathized with Rob's impulse to be rid of the onions at any cost.

"Oh, Rob!" she said, "how could you do such a thing? You knew they must belong to somebody."

"Well, I did afterwards,—after I told Nell; but, when I picked them up, I didn't think any thing except how they smelt. It was a good riddance anyhow."

The sick lady, who had to lie down all the way, was in the section next but one to Mr. March's. She had looked much amused during all this conversation, which she could not help hearing. Mrs. March noticed her pleasant smile, and thought she would like to do something for her. So she gave Nelly a nice cup of hot tea to take over to her. The lady was very grateful.

"Oh!" she said, "this is the first good tea I have tasted since I left home."

Then she made Nelly sit down on the bed beside her, and talked to her so sweetly that Nelly felt as if she had known her all her life; and pretty soon she told her all about Mrs. Napoleon.

"Bring her here. Let me see her," said the lady.

"Oh, I can't bear to have anybody see her!" said Nelly: "she looks awful."

"Never mind: we'll draw the curtains, and nobody else shall see."

So she called her nurse, who was sitting near; and, as soon as Nelly had climbed up into the berth, the nurse drew the curtains tight and shut them together. It seemed to Mrs. March a long time before Nelly came out. When she came she had two small parcels in her hands. They were both in nice white tissue paper, tied up with pink ribbon. Nelly looked as if she had been crying, but yet she looked happy; and the sick lady had a most beautiful smile on her face. Nelly gave one of the parcels to her mother, and said:—

"Mamma, will you please pack this in the bag? It is the Empress's clothes. Perhaps I may have another doll some day that they will fit."

Then she handed the other parcel to her father, and said:—

"Please throw this out of the window, papa?"

"What is it, Nell?" he said, surprised.

Nelly's voice trembled a little; but she answered bravely.

"Mrs. Napoleon, papa. That nice lady looked at her, and said she never could be mended; and if she were me, she'd throw her right away. She says I'll feel better as soon as she is out of my sight."

Mr. March looked over at the sick lady and bowed and smiled.

"She is quite right, Nell. You'll forget all about it much quicker. Good-by, Mrs. Napoleon," he said, and threw the white parcel with its pink ribbons as far as he could throw it.

"I don't want to forget about it, papa," replied Nelly, and pressed her face close against the window-pane, so as not to lose that last glimpse of the package.

Never were people gladder to reach any place than Mr. and Mrs. March and Nelly and Rob were to reach Denver. They were so tired that they went right to bed as soon as they entered the hotel. They did not want any supper. The next morning, however, they were up early, all rested and ready to look at every thing. The first thing they saw as they walked out of the hotel door, was a long range of high mountains to the south. They looked down the street on which the hotel stood, and saw these mountains rising up like a great wall across the end of the street. They were covered with snow two-thirds of the way down. The lower part which was not covered with snow was of a very dark blue color; and the upper part, where the snow lay, shone in the sun so dazzling bright that it made their eyes ache to look at it. The sky was as blue as blue could be, and had not a cloud in it; and some of the sharp peaks of the mountains looked as if they were really cutting through the sky. Mr. and Mrs. March and Nelly and Rob all stood still in the middle of the street looking at the beautiful sight. Several carriages and wagons came very near running over them, but they hardly observed it. No one of them spoke for some minutes: even Rob was overawed by the grandeur of the mountains. But his overawed silence did not last long. In a few minutes, he broke out with:—

"Bully mountains! ain't they? Come on!" Mr. and Mrs. March laughed.

"Well, Rob," said his father, "you've brought us to our senses: haven't you? But I do wish you wouldn't talk slang."

"No, Rob," said his mother. "How many times have I asked you not to say 'bully'?"

"I know it, mother," replied Rob; "but you don't tell me any other word to say instead of it. A fellow must say something; and 'bully' 's such a bully word. I don't believe there's any other word that's good for any thing when things are 'bully.'"

"Oh, dear Rob! dear Rob! Three times in one sentence! What shall we do to you? We will really have to hire you to leave off that word, as grandpa hired you to drink cold water, at so much a week."

"Mamma," said Rob, solemnly, "you couldn't hire me to leave off saying 'bully.' Money wouldn't pay me: I try not to say it often, because you hate it so; but I don't expect to leave it off till I'm a man. I just have to say it sometimes."

"Oh, Rob, you don't 'have' to say it!" exclaimed Nell. "Nobody 'has to say' any thing."

"Girls don't," said Rob, patronizingly: "but girls are different; I'm always telling you that girls don't need words like boys. It's just like whistling: girls needn't whistle; but a boy—why, a boy'd die if he couldn't whistle."

"I can whistle," said Nell. "I can whistle most as well as you."

"You can't, Nell," exclaimed Rob, utterly astonished.

For reply, Nelly quietly whistled a bar of Yankee Doodle. Rob stared at her.

"Why, so you can!" said he. "I didn't know girls ever whistled: I thought they were made so they couldn't."

"Oh, no!" said Mrs. March; "I used to be a great whistler when I was a girl; but I never let anybody hear me, if I could help it. And Nelly knows that it is not lady-like for a girl to whistle. She likes to whistle as well as you like to say 'bully,' however; so you might leave off that as well as she can leave off whistling."

"But you used to whistle all alone by yourself," persisted Rob; "and it is just as good fun to whistle all alone as with other people; but it wouldn't be any fun to go off all alone, and say 'bully! bully! bully!'"

Mrs. March put her hands over her ears, and exclaimed: "Oh, Rob! Rob! That makes six times! That dreadful word!"

"Oh!" said Rob, pretending to be very innocent, "do you mind my saying it that way? That wasn't saying it really: only talking about it," and Rob gave his mother a mischievous look.

The streets were thronged with people; everybody seemed in a hurry; the shop windows were full of just such things as one sees in shop windows at the East; through street after street they walked, growing more and more surprised every moment.

"Why, Robert," said Mrs. March, "except for the bustling and excited air of the people, I should not know that I was not in an Eastern city."

"Nor I," said Mr. March: "I am greatly astonished to see such a civilized-looking place."

Just then an open carriage rolled past them. It was a beautiful carriage, lined with red satin.

"Oh, mamma! there is the nice lady who was in the cars," said Nelly: "let me go and speak to her."

The lady saw them and stopped her carriage: she was very glad to see their faces; she felt so lonely in this strange place. She was all alone with her doctor and nurse; and already she was so homesick she was almost ready to turn about and go home.

"Oh! do let your little girl jump in and take a drive with me," she said. "It will be a great favor to me if you will."

"Oh, mamma! let me; let me," cried Nelly; and, almost before her mother had fully pronounced the words giving her permission, she was climbing up the carriage steps. As she took her seat by the lady's side, she looked wistfully back at Rob. Mrs. Williams (that was the lady's name) observed the glance, and said: "Won't you let the little boy come too? Would you like to come, dear?"

"No, thank you," said Rob: "I'd rather walk. I can see better."

"Oh, Rob! how can you?" exclaimed Nelly, but the driver touched his horses with the whip, and they were off.

What a drive that was for Nelly! She never forgot it. It was her first sight of the grand Rocky Mountains. The city of Denver lies on a great plain; about thirty miles away stands the mountain range; between the city and the mountains runs a river,—the Platte River,—which has green trees along its bank. Mrs. Williams took Nelly out on high ground to the east, from which she could look over the whole city, and the river, and out to the beautiful mountains. Some of the peaks were as solid white as white clouds, and looked almost like clouds suddenly made to stand still in the skies. Mrs. Williams loved mountains very much; and, as she looked at Nelly's face, she saw that Nelly loved them too. Nelly said very little; but she kept hold of Mrs. Williams's hand, and, whenever they came to a particularly beautiful view, she would press it so hard that once or twice Mrs. Williams cried out: "Dear child, you hurt me: don't squeeze so tight;" upon which Nelly, very much ashamed, would let go of her hand for a few minutes, but presently, in her excitement, would be holding it again as tight as ever. Mrs. Williams was a widow lady: she had lost her husband and her only child—a little girl about Nelly's age—only two years before, and she had been an invalid ever since. As soon as she saw Nelly's face in the cars, she had fancied that she looked like her little girl who was dead. Her name was Ellen too, and she had always been called Elly; so that Nelly's name had a familiar sound to her. Mrs. Williams was a very rich lady; and, if Nelly's father and mother had been poor people, she would have asked them at once to give Nelly to her. But, of course, she knew that that would be out of the question; so all she could do was to try to make Nelly have a good time as long as she was with her. After they had driven all about the city, and had seen all there was to see, she said to the driver:

"Now go to the best toy store in the city." Nelly did not hear this direction: she was absorbed in looking at the mountains. So she was much surprised when they stopped at the shop, and Mrs. Williams said:—

"Now, Nelly dear, I want you to go in and buy something for me: will you? I can't get out of the carriage myself."

"Yes indeed," exclaimed Nelly, "if I can; but I never went into a shop alone in my life. Mamma always goes with me. Can't I bring what you want out here for you to look at?"

Mrs. Williams laughed.

"You'll be a better judge of it than I, Nell," she said. "It is a wax doll I want for a young friend of mine,—just about such an one as you had in the cars."

Wasn't Nelly a very simple little girl never to think that Mrs. Williams meant to buy it for her? She never so much as thought of it. "Oh!" said she, "how glad she'll be! I hope she'll have better luck with it than I had. You tell her not to take her on any journeys. Is it your own little girl?"

Then Nelly saw the tears come in Mrs. Williams's eyes: her lips quivered, and she said:—

"My own little girl is in heaven; but this doll is for a little girl I love very much, who looks like my little girl. Run in, dear, and see what you can find."

The shopkeeper looked quite surprised to see such a little girl coming up to the counter, and asking if he had any big wax dolls with eyes which would open.

"Yes, sis," he said, "we have two; but they cost too much money for you, I reckon."

Nelly did not like being called "sis."

"My name is not sis," she said, "and the doll is for a sick lady out in the carriage. Won't you please bring them out for her to look at?" and Nelly turned, and walked out of the shop.

"Hoity toity!" said the man. "What airs we put on, don't we, for small fry! Eastern folks, I reckon;" but he went to a drawer, and took out his two wax dolls, and carried them to the carriage. Each doll was in a box by itself. One was dressed in pink satin, and one in white muslin.

"Which is the prettiest, Nelly?" said Mrs. Williams.

"Oh, the one in white muslin,—ever so much the prettiest! My mamma says satin is very silly on dolls, and I think so too. Mrs. Napoleon had a blue satin dress, and I gave it to Mabel Martin. She never wore it but once,—the day she came; she had it on when she was in the stocking; but I hated it on her."

"In the stocking!" said Mrs. Williams; "that big doll never went into a stocking. What do you mean?"

"Oh, not into a common stocking!" said Nelly; "into one of my grandpa's stockings. Mamma always hangs his stockings up for us at Christmas."

Mrs. Williams was still more perplexed.

"Why, child," she said, "how big is your grandpa? Is he a giant?"

"Oh, no!" laughed Nelly, "he isn't very big; but these are great stockings he had made to sleep in. They come all the way up his legs,—both parts of his leg,—way up above his knee, as far as his legs go, so as to keep him warm when he's asleep. He doesn't sleep in any night-gown."

Mrs. Williams laughed heartily at this, and was about to ask Nelly some other questions, when the storekeeper interrupted her with:—

"Can't stand here all day, mum. Do ye want the dolls or not: say quick."

Mrs. Williams was not accustomed to be spoken to in this manner, and she looked at him in surprise.

"Oh!" he said, in answer to her look, "you ain't in the East, you'll find out. We Western men've got too much to do to dangle round all day on a single trade. Do ye want the dolls? If not, I'll take 'em back."

"I am sorry you are in such a hurry all the time, sir," said Mrs. Williams, slowly: "it must be very disagreeable. I will take one of these dolls as soon as this little girl has decided which one is the prettiest."

"Oh, the white-muslin-gown one, ever so much," exclaimed Nelly.

"Very well. You may put it up for me," said Mrs. Williams, taking out her purse. "How much does it cost?"

"Ten dollars," said the man.

"Oh, oh!" exclaimed Nelly, "mine was only five, and it was just as big as this one."

The man looked a little embarrassed. The doll did not really cost ten dollars: it had only cost five; but he thought Mrs. Williams looked like a rich lady, and he might as well ask all he could get.

"Well, this cost me six dollars in New York," he said; "but there isn't much sale for them here: you can have it for seven."

Mrs. Williams paid him the seven dollars, and they drove away with the box with the doll in it, lying in Nelly's lap. Presently Nelly said:—

"Oh, Mrs. Williams, won't you let me send all Mrs. Napoleon's clothes to the little girl this dolly's for? I think they'd fit this dolly: don't you?"

"You dear little thing!" exclaimed Mrs. Williams; "would you really send all those pretty clothes to a little girl you don't know?"

"But you know her," said Nelly, "and you said you loved her; so I'd like to have her have them. Besides, I don't believe I'll ever have another dolly like Mrs. Napoleon: at any rate, not for a great many years."

"Very well, dear," replied Mrs. Williams: "I will take them. She will be all the more pleased to get so many extra suits. When we stop at the hotel, you can give them to me."

"The waterproof is torn some," said Nelly: "I guess mamma'll mend it."

"Oh, never mind!" said Mrs. Williams. "This little girl's mamma is a very kind mamma: she can mend it."

When they stopped at the hotel, Nelly raced upstairs and burst into her mother's room.

"Mamma!" she exclaimed almost as breathlessly as Rob was in the habit of speaking, "mamma, give me all Mrs. Napoleon's clothes. The sick lady's bought a beautiful wax doll—just Mrs. Napoleon's size—her name's Mrs. Williams—I asked her—and she's going to send it to a little girl she loves very much—her own little girl's dead—and I want her to have those clothes too, because Mrs. Williams is so kind; oh, she's the sweetest lady! Give me the clothes, quick!"

Mrs. March was looking in a trunk for them while Nelly ran on. She smiled as she handed them to Nelly.

"Are you sure you will not want them yourself, Nell?" she said; "you might have a doll that they'd just fit."

"I don't believe I ever will, mamma," said Nelly, "and even if I do, I'd rather give these clothes away. Mrs. Williams is such a sweet lady—you don't know, mamma!" And Nelly ran downstairs with the package in her hand. As she left the room, Rob said to his mother:—

"Mamma, I bet she's bought the doll for Nell! Wouldn't that be fun? Nell's such a goose she'd never suspect any thing!"

"Hush, Rob!" said Mrs. March; "don't put such an idea into Nell's head. It isn't at all likely."

"Well, you'll see, mamma. I'll bet you any thing."

"Ladies don't 'bet,' Rob; and you know mamma hates to hear you say the word."

"Oh, dear, mamma!" groaned Rob, "you hate all the nice words! I wish ladies were just like boys!"

Late that evening, after Rob and Nelly were fast asleep, a large parcel was brought to their rooms, addressed to Mrs. March. She opened it, and found inside—sure enough, as Rob had said—the beautiful wax doll which Nelly had told them about; and, in the box with the doll, the little bundle of all Mrs. Napoleon's clothes. A note from Mrs. Williams to Mrs. March was pinned on the outside of the package. She said:—

"My dear Mrs. March,—Will you allow me to give this doll to your dear, sweet little daughter, to supply the place of the lost Mrs. Napoleon. If you knew how great a pleasure it is to me to do this, I am sure you would not refuse it. Your little girl reminds me so strongly of my own little Elly, who died two years ago, that I only wish I could have her always with me.

"Truly your friend, although a stranger,

"Isabella Williams."

"Well, Rob was right!" exclaimed Mrs. March, as she read this note. "See, Robert, what a beautiful doll has come for Nelly from that invalid lady she went to drive with this afternoon. Rob said she had bought it for Nelly, but I didn't believe it. I don't exactly like to take such a valuable present from a stranger."

Mr. March was reading the note.

"But we could not refuse," he said. "It would be cruel, when she wants to give it to Nelly because she looks so like her little child that is dead."

"No," said Mrs. March; "of course we could not refuse."

"She had one of the sweetest and saddest faces I ever saw," said Mr. March. "I do not think she will live long. I wish we could do something for her."

"I will go and see her to-morrow morning, and thank her for the doll," said Mrs. March; "and then I will find out whether we can do any thing for her or not. I shall not let Nelly know any thing about the doll till we are all settled. I will pack it away in my trunk."

"Yes, that will be much wiser," said Mr. March; "we won't have a second Mrs. Napoleon disaster."

Later in the evening, Deacon and Mrs. Plummer arrived; and the next day was very much taken up in discussing plans with them, and making arrangements for going on their journey; and it was late in the afternoon before Mrs. March found time to go to the hotel where Mrs. Williams was staying. She found, to her great sorrow, that Mrs. Williams had left town at noon. She had gone, the landlord said, to Idaho Springs; where he believed she was to take the hot baths. Mrs. March wrote a note to her immediately, and the landlord said he would forward it; but he was not sure of her address, and Mrs. March was very much afraid it would never reach her.

The Marches stayed in Denver a week, but they did not hear a word from Mrs. Williams, and Mrs. March reproached herself very much for not having gone to see her early the next morning after the doll came.

"It is evident," she said, "that she never got my note; and what must she have thought of us for not acknowledging such a beautiful present. It will worry me always, as often as I see the doll."

CHAPTER V

FIRST GLIMPSES OF COLORADO AND A NEW HOME

Just one week from the day they had reached Denver they set out again on their journey southward. They were going to a beautiful place in the mountains, called the Ute Pass. It really is a canyon: you remember I tried to explain to you what a canyon is like. This canyon is called the Ute Pass because a tribe of Indians named the Utes used to come and go through it when they were journeying from one hunting ground to another. A little stream comes down through this pass, which is called the Fountain Creek. It leaps and tumbles from rock to rock, and is always in a foam. A great many years ago, some Frenchmen who were here named it "The fountain that boils." Part of the canyon is very narrow, and the rocky walls are very high. There is a good road through it now, close beside the brook; but when the Indians used to go through it there was no road: they had a little narrow path; some parts of it are still to be seen high up on the ledges of the rock, wherever there is room enough for a pony to get foothold. It looks like a little, worn track which sheep or goats might have made; you would never believe, to look at it, that great bands of Indians on ponies used to travel over it. One thing they used to come down for was to drink the waters of some springs which bubble up out of the rocks at the mouth of the canyon. These are very strange. They bubble up so fast that they look as if they were boiling: this is why the Frenchmen called the brook "The fountain that boils." But they are not any hotter than the water in the brook. The Indians found out that this water would cure people who were ill: so they used to wrap their sick people up in blankets, and bring them on ponies over this little narrow path through the pass, and then build their wigwams close to the springs, and stay there for weeks, drinking the water, and bathing in it. The last part of the canyon is not narrow: it widens out; and has little fields and meadows and groves in it. The road through it is lined almost all the way with green trees and bushes of different kinds; and there is a beautiful wild-hop vine which grows in great abundance, and climbs up the trees, and seems to be tying them all up in knots together; the hop blossoms look like green tassels at every knot. Does not this sound like a lovely place to live in? Mr. and Mrs. March thought so; they had seen several pictures of it; and a man who had lived two years there told them about it, and tried to persuade them to buy his house and land. But old Deacon Plummer was too wise to buy till they had tried it.

"No, no," he said; "we'll hire it for six months first, and see how it works. It may be all true as you say about the cattle's grazin' well up and down them rocks; but I'd rather hev medder land any day. We'll hire, to begin with."

So they had rented the man's house and land for six months, and had bought all his cows: the cows were still on the place. Then they bought a nice wagon, with three seats and a white top to it, very much like the butchers' carts you see going round with meat to sell in country villages. All the farmers in Colorado drive in such wagons. Then they had bought two horses. The horses and the wagon were to go with them on the cars. I must tell you about the horses. They had such queer names! One was a dark red, and he was called "Fox." He had a narrow head and a sharp nose; and really his face did look like a fox's face. The other horse was of a very queer shade of reddish yellow, with a good deal of white about him; his forefeet were white, and his mane was almost white; and, if you will believe it, his name was "Pumpkinseed"! The man the Marches bought him of did not know why he was called so. He himself had only owned him a year; and, when he asked the man he bought him of how he came to give the horse such a queer name, he said he "didn't know. The old woman named him; mebbe she thought he was kind o' the color of pumpkin-seed, sort o' streaked with yaller 'n' white." Rob was delighted with this name. He kept singing it over and over: "Pumpkinseed! Pumpkinseed! We've got a horse called Pumpkinseed!"—till his mother begged him to stop.

The railroad which runs southward from Denver is the kind of railroad called a narrow-gauge railroad. This means that the track is only about two-thirds the width of ordinary railroad tracks; and the cars and the engines are made small to match the track. You can't think how droll a train of such little cars looks when you first see it; it looks like a play train. A gentleman I know said a funny thing the first time he saw a little narrow-gauge train puffing along behind its little engine; he turned to his wife: "Look here, wife," said he; "let's buy that and send it home to the children to play with."

When Rob and Nelly first stepped into the little car, they exclaimed, "What a funny car!" On one side the car there were double seats in which two people could sit; on the other side were single seats, rather tight even for one person. Nelly and Rob both ran to get two of these little seats.

"Hurrah!" said Rob, as he sat down in this; "I'm going in a high chair! Mamma, ain't this just like a baby's high chair?"

"Yes, just about, Rob," said Mr. March, who had taken his seat in one, and found it too tight for comfort.

But they soon ceased to wonder at the little seats, for they found so much to look at out of the car windows. The journey from Denver to the town of Colorado Springs, where they were to leave the cars, takes four hours and a half: the road lies all the way on the plains, but runs near the lower hills of the mountain ranges on the right; about half way, it crosses what is called the "Divide." That is a high ridge of land, with great pine groves on it, and a beautiful little lake at the top. This is over eight thousand feet high.

Down the south side of this, the cars run swiftly by their own weight, just as you go down hill on a sled: the engine does not have to draw them at all. In fact, they have to turn the brakes down some of the time to keep the cars from going too fast.

Nelly and Rob sat sidewise in their seats with their faces close to the window, all the way. They had never seen such a country. Every mile new mountain tops came in sight, and new and wonderful rocks. Some of the rocks looked like great castles, with towers to them. More than once Rob called out:—

"There, mamma! that one is a castle: I know it is. It can't possibly be a rock."

And it was hard even for the grown people to believe that they were merely rocks. Old Deacon and Mrs. Plummer were almost as much excited as Rob and Nelly. The Deacon, however, was looking with a farmer's eye at the country. He did not like to find so much snow: as far as he could see in all directions, there was a thin coating of snow over the ground. The yellow grass blades stood up above it like little masts of ships under water. Everywhere he looked he saw cattle walking about. They did not look as if they were contented; and they were so thin, you could see their bones when they came close to the cars.

At last the Deacon said to Mr. March:—

"Here's their stock runnin' out all winter, that we've heard so much on; but it appears to me, it's mighty poor-lookin' stock. I don't see how in natur' the poor things get a livin' off this dried grass, half buried up in snow."

"Ah, sir!" spoke up a man on the seat behind Mr. March; "you do not know how much sweeter the hay is, dried on the stalk, standing. There is no such hay in the world as the winter grasses in Colorado."

"Do you keep stock yourself, sir?" asked the Deacon.

"No, I've never been in the stock business myself," the man replied; "but I have lived in this State five years, and I know it pretty well; and it's the greatest country for stock in the world, sir,—yes, the greatest in the world."

Deacon Plummer smiled, but did not ask any more questions. After this enthusiastic man had left the car, the Deacon said quietly, pointing to a poor, lean cow who was sniffing hungrily at some little tufts of yellow grass near the railroad track: "I'd rather have her opinion than his. If the critter could speak, I guess she'd say, 'Give me a manger full of good medder hay, in a Massachusetts barn, in place of all this fine winter grass of Colorado.'"

Rob and Nelly laughed out at this idea of the cow's being called in as witness.

"I guess so too," said Rob; "don't she look hungry, though?"

Just before they reached the town of Colorado Springs, they suddenly saw, a short distance off, on the right-hand side of the railroad track, two enormous red rocks, rising like broken pieces of a high wall; they looked thin, like slabs. One of them was deep brick red, and the other was a sort of pink.

"Oh, mamma! look quick, look quick," exclaimed Nelly: "what can those red rocks be?"

"They are the Gates of the Garden of the Gods," said the conductor, who was passing at that moment; "the Garden lies just behind them, and you drive in between those high rocks."

Even while he was passing, the rocks disappeared from view. Nelly looked at them with awe-stricken eyes.

"The Garden of the Gods, sir!" she said; "what does that mean? What gods? Do they worship heathen gods in this country?"

A lady who was sitting opposite Nelly laughed aloud at this question.

"I don't wonder you ask such a question," she said: "it is one of the most absurd names ever given to a place, and I cannot find out who gave it. Those high rocks that you saw are like a sort of gateway into a great field which is full of very queer-shaped rocks. Most of them are red, like the gates; some of them have uncouth resemblances to animals or to human heads. There is one that looks like a seal, and another like a fish standing on its tail, and peering up over a rock. There are a good many cedar-trees and pines in this place, and in June a few flowers; but, for the most part, it is quite barren. The soil is of a red color, like the rocks; and the grass is very thin, so that the red color shows through; and you couldn't find a place in all Colorado that looks less like a garden."

"But why did they say 'gods'?" asked Nelly; "did they mean the old gods? My papa has told me about them,—Jupiter, and his wife, Juno. Is this where they lived?"

The lady laughed again. "I can't tell you about that, dear," she said. "I think they thought the place was so grand that it looked as if it ought to belong to some beings greater than human beings: so they said 'gods.' I think myself it would have been a good name for it to call it the 'Fortress of the Gods,' or 'The Tombs of the Giants;' but not the 'Garden of the Gods.' I shouldn't want it even for my own garden; and I'm only a commonplace woman. But it is a very wonderful place to see. You will be sure to go there, for all strangers are taken to see it."

"Do you live in Colorado, madam?" asked Mrs. March.

"Oh, yes!" replied the lady: "Colorado Springs, the little town we are just coming to, is my home."

"Do you like it?" asked Mrs. March, anxiously.

"Like it!" replied the lady: "like is not a strong enough word. I love it. I love these mountains so that, whenever I go away from them, I miss them all the time; and I keep seeing them before me all the while, just as you see the face of a dear friend you are separated from. I should be very ungrateful, if I did not love the place; for it has simply made me over again. I came out here three years ago on a mattress, with my doctor and nurse, and thought it very doubtful if I lived to get here; and I have been perfectly well ever since."

"Did you have asthma?" asked Rob, turning very red as soon as he had asked the question. He was afraid it was improper. "My papa has the asthma."

"Oh, if that is your papa's trouble, he will be sure to be entirely well. Nobody can have asthma in Colorado," replied the lady. "It is the one thing which is always cured here. My own trouble was only a throat trouble."

"I am very glad to hear you speak so confidently about the asthma," said Mrs. March: "my husband has been a great sufferer from it, and it is for that we have come."

"You have done the very wisest thing you could have done," said the lady "you will never be sorry for it. But here we are; good morning."

The train was already stopping in front of a little brown wooden building, and the brakeman called out: "Colorado Springs."

"What a pleasant lady!" said Nelly to her mother.

"Yes," said Mrs. March; "but it was partly because she told us such good news for papa."

As they stepped out on the platform, they were almost deafened by the shouts of two black men, who were calling out the names of two hotels: two omnibuses belonging to the different hotels were standing there, and each black man was trying to get the most passengers for his hotel. Each man called out:—

"Free 'bus—this way to the free 'bus—only first-class hotel in the city."

"Mercy on us!" exclaimed Mrs. March. "Let us go to the one who speaks the lowest, if there is any difference. They must think railroad travellers are all deaf! It makes no difference to which one we go just for a dinner. We shall drive home this afternoon."

So saying, she stepped into the nearest omnibus, and the rest of the party followed her. In a moment more, the driver cracked his whip, and the four horses set off on a full gallop up the hill which lies between the railway station and the town. As they drew near the hotel door, the driver turned such a sharp corner, all at full speed, that the omnibus swung round on the wheels of one side, and pitched so violently that it threw both Nelly and Rob off their seats into the laps of their father and mother who sat opposite.

"Hullo!" exclaimed Rob, picking himself up, "this is the way the gods drive, I suppose!"

His mother looked reprovingly at him; but he only laughed and said:—

"They call every thing after the gods, don't they? So I thought that pitch was the same sort."

After dinner, Deacon Plummer harnessed Fox and Pumpkinseed into the new wagon, and they set out for their new home. It was a beautiful afternoon; as warm and bright as a May day in New England. There was no snow to be seen except on the mountains, which rose like a great blue wall with white peaks to the west of the town.

"Now this feels something like," said the Deacon, as they set out; "this is like what they told us. I wonder if it's been this way all winter."

They drove five miles straight towards the mountains. Nelly had taken her picture of Pike's Peak out of the travelling-bag, and held it in her hand. Now she could look up from it to the real mountain itself, and see if the picture were true.

"I don't care for the picture any more, papa," said Nelly, "now I've got the mountain. The picture isn't half so beautiful." And Nelly hardly took her eyes from the shining, snowy summit till they were so close to its base that it was nearly shut out from their sight by the lower hills.

They drove through the little village at the mouth of the Ute Pass. Here they saw two large hotels, and half a dozen small houses and shops. This little village is called Manitou. The Indians named it so. Manitou means "Good Spirit," and they thought the Good Spirit had made the waters bubble up out of the rocks here to cure sick people. A few rods beyond the last house, they entered the real pass. Now their surprises began. On each side of them were high walls of rock: at the bottom of the right-hand wall was just room enough for the road; on the left hand they looked over a steep precipice down to a brook which was rushing over great stones, and leaping down with much roar and foam from one basin to another; there was no fence along this left-hand side of the road, and as Mrs. March looked over she shuddered, and exclaimed:—

"Oh, Robert, let me get out! I never can drive up this road: let us all walk."

Mr. March himself thought it was dangerous; so he stopped the horses, and Mrs. March and Mrs. Plummer and the two children got out to walk. Nelly and Rob did not look where they were walking; they were all the while looking up at the great rocks over their heads, which jutted out above the road like great shelves: some rose up high in the air like towers; they were all of a fine red color, or else of a yellowish brown; and they were full of sharp points, and deep lines were cut in them; and a beautiful green lichen grew on many of them. Sometimes they were heaped up in piles, so that they looked as if they might tumble down any minute; sometimes they were hollowed out in places that looked as if they were made for niches for statues to stand in; on one high hill was a strange pile, built up so solid and round it looked like a pulpit. Mrs. March and Nelly and Rob were standing still, looking at this, when a man who passed by, seeing they were strangers, called out:—

"That's Tim Bunker's Pulpit."

"Who's Tim Bunker?" cried Rob; but the man was riding so fast he did not hear him.

"Oh, Nell! if it isn't too far we'll climb up there some day: won't we?" said Rob. "Mamma, don't you suppose we're pretty near our house?"

"I think not, Rob," replied Mrs. March; "there cannot be any place for a house while the pass is so narrow."

"Oh, mamma! mamma! come here!" shouted Nelly. She had taken one step down from the road, and was looking over into the brook. "Here is the most beautiful little fall you ever saw!"

They all climbed carefully down on the broad stone where Nelly was standing, and looked over. It was indeed a beautiful fall: not very high,—but all one white foam from top to bottom; and the water fell into a small pool, where the spray had frozen into a great round rim: it looked like frosted silver.

"That's a pretty silver bowl to catch the water in; ain't it, now?" said Mrs. Plummer. "I'd like a drink of it."

"What a queer country this is!" said Mrs. March "here we are walking without any outside wraps on, and almost too warm in the sun; and here is ice all round this pool; and I have seen little thin rims of ice here and there on the brook all the way up."

"It's just bully," cried Rob. "Say, mamma, I'm going down to drink out of that bowl;" and, before they could stop him, Rob was half way down the precipice. He found it rougher than he thought; and he had more than one good tumble before he got down to the bed of the brook: but he reached it, dipped his drinking-cup into the pool, broke off a big piece of the frozen spray, and with that in one hand, and his drinking-cup in the other, began to climb up again. This was twice as hard as to go down,—it made Rob puff and pant, and he lost his piece of ice before he had gone many steps,—but he managed to carry the water up, and very much they all enjoyed it. "It's the sweetest water I ever tasted," said Mrs. Plummer.

"Yes," said Mrs. March, "it must be, in good part, melted snow water out of the mountains: that is always sweet. This is the brook, no doubt, which runs past our house. You know they said it was close to the brook."

"Oh, splendid!" cried Rob; "oh, mamma, isn't this a gay country? so much nicer than an old village with streets in it, like Mayfield. This is some fun."

Mrs. March laughed, but she thought in her heart:

"I hope he'll always find it fun."

"I don't think it's fun, Rob," said Nelly, slowly.

"Why not, Nell?" exclaimed Rob; "why don't you like it?"

"I do like it," said Nell, earnestly; "I like it better than any thing in all the world; but I don't think it's fun. It's lots better than fun."

"Well, what'd you call it, if you don't call it fun?" said Rob, in a vexed tone.

Nelly did not answer.

"Why don't you say?" cried Rob.

"I'm thinking," replied Nelly: "I guess there isn't any name for it. I don't know any."

Just at this moment, they heard the tinkle of bells ahead, and in a second more loud shouts and cries. They walked faster. The wagon had been out of their sight for some time. As they turned a sharp bend in the road now, they saw it; and they saw also another wagon brought to a dead halt in front of it. The wagon which was coming down was loaded high with packages of shingles. It was drawn by six mules. They had bells on their necks, so as to warn people when they were coming. Mr. March and Deacon Plummer had heard these bells, but they had not known what they meant: if they had, they would have drawn off into one of the wider bends in the road, and waited. Now here the two wagons were, face to face, in one of the very worst places in the road, just where it seemed barely wide enough for one wagon alone. The rock rose up straight on one side, and the precipice fell off sharp on the other. To make matters worse, Pumpkinseed, who hated the very sight of a mule, and who did not like the shining of the bright, yellow shingles, began to rear and to plunge. The driver of the mule team sat still, and looked at Mr. March and the Deacon surlily without speaking. Mr. March and the Deacon looked at him helplessly, and said:—

"What are we going to do now?"

"Didn't yer hear me a-coming?" growled the man.

"No, sir," said Mr. March, pleasantly: "we are strangers here, and did not know what the bells meant."

At this the man jumped down: he was not so angry, when he found out that they were strangers. He walked down the road a little way, and looked, and shook his head; then he walked back in the direction he had come from; then he came back, and said:—

"There's nothin' for it, mister, but you'll have to unharness your team. My mules'll stand; I'll help you."

So they took out Pumpkinseed and Fox, and Mr. March led them on ahead. Then Deacon Plummer and the mule-driver pushed the wagon backward down the road till they came to a place where there was a curve in the road, and they could push it up so close to the rock that there was room for another wagon to pass. There the mule-driver drove his wagon by; and then Mr. March led Fox and Pumpkinseed down, and harnessed them to the wagon again: all this time Mrs. March and Mrs. Plummer and Rob and Nelly stood on the edge of the precipice, wherever they could find a secure place, and holding on to each other. As the mule team started on, the driver called back: "There's three or four more behind me: you'd better keep a sharp lookout, mister."

"I should think so," exclaimed Deacon Plummer, "this is the perkiest place for teams to pass in thet ever I got into. I don't much like the thought o' comin' up and down here with all our teamin'."

"No," said Mrs. March. "I'll never drive down here as long as I live."

"Never's a long word, wife," laughed Mr. March. "If we're going to live in this Pass, I don't doubt we shall get so used to this road, we sha'n't think any thing about it."

The road wound like a snake, turning first one way and then the other, and crossing the brook every few minutes. Sometimes they would be in dark shadow, when they were close to the left-hand hill; and then, in a minute, they would come out again into full sunlight.

"It's just like going right back again from after sundown to the middle of the afternoon: isn't it, mamma?" said Nelly. "How queer it feels!"

"Yes," said Mrs. March, "and I do not like the sundown part. I hope our house is not in such a narrow part of the Pass as this."

Presently they saw a white house a little way ahead, on the right-hand side of the road. A high, rocky precipice rose immediately behind it; and the brook seemed to be running under the house, it was so close to it. The house was surrounded by tall pine and fir trees; and, on the opposite side of the road the hill was so steep and high that already, although it was only three o'clock in the afternoon, the sun had gone down out of sight, and the house was dark and cold. The whole party looked anxiously at this house.

"That can't be it, can it?" said Mrs. March.

"Oh, no!" said Mr. March; "it isn't in the least such a house as the photograph showed: but I will stop and ask."

A man was chopping wood a few steps from the house. Mr. March called to him.

"This isn't Garland's, is it?"

Instead of replying, the man laid down his axe, and walked slowly out to the road, staring very hard at them all.

"Be you the folks that's comin' to live to Garland's?" he said.

"Yes," said the Deacon; "and we hope this isn't the place; if 'tis, we hain't been told the truth, that's all."

"Oh, Lor', no," laughed the man. "This ain't Garland's; his place's two mile farther on. That ain't no great shakes of a place, either,—Garland's ain't; but he's got more land'n we have. There ain't land enough here to raise a ground mole in. I'm sick on 't."

"You don't get daylight enough to raise any thing, for that matter," said Mr. March; "here it is the middle of the afternoon, by the clock, and past sundown for you."

"I know it," said the man; "but there's something in the air here which kind o' makes up for every thing. I don't know how 'tis, but we've had our healths first rate ever since we've lived here. But I'm going to move down to the Springs: it's too lonesome up here, and there ain't nothin' to do. Be you goin' into stock?"

"Not much," said Mr. March. "We are only trying an experiment here: we have bought all Garland's cows."

"Have ye?" said the man. "Well, Garland had some first-rate cattle; but they're pretty well peaked out now. Cattle gets dreadful poor here, along in March and April: ye'd reelly pity 'em. But it's amazin' how they pick up's soon's the grass comes in June. It don't seem to hurt 'em none to be kinder starved all winter. Come and see us: we're neighborly folks out'n this country. My wife she'll be glad to know there's some wimmen folks in the Pass. She's been the only woman here for a year. Garland he bached it: he hadn't no wife."

Rob and Nelly had listened silently with wide-open eyes and ears to this conversation; but at this last statement Rob's curiosity got the better of him.

"What is baching it?" said he, as they drove off.

The man laughed.

"Ask your father: he'll tell you," he said.

"What is it, papa?" said Rob.

"I suppose it is for a man to live all alone, without any wife. You know they call unmarried men 'old bachelors,' after they get to be thirty or thirty-five. But I never heard the word before."

"Oh!" said Rob; "is that all? I thought 'twas a trade he had,—or something he sold or made."

"Well," said the Deacon; "any man that could live up here in this stone gully, without his wife along, I don't think much of. It's the lonesomest place, for an out-doors place, that ever I saw."

"Oh, I think it's splendid!" said Rob.

"So do I," said Nelly. "It's perfectly beautiful!"

"Ain't it a comfort, Mrs. March," said Mrs. Plummer, "how children always do take to new places?"

"We don't either," cried Rob; "I hate some places I've seen. But this is splendid. Just you look at those rocks: you bet I'll pitch 'em down! I'm going up on to every one of the highest rocks I can find."

"Oh, Rob! you'll break your neck," said Mrs. March. "I shall not allow you to climb, unless your father is with you."

"Now, mamma"—Rob was beginning when, suddenly catching sight of a house, he exclaimed:—

"There 'tis! That's like the picture. And there's the barn! I saw it first! Oh, hurry! hurry!" And in his excitement Rob stood up in the wagon.

Yes, there it was. It had looked better in the photograph which Mr. Garland had showed to Mr. March than it did in reality. It was a small, unpainted pine house; without any piazza or blinds. The windows were small; the front door was very small; there was no fence between it and the road; and all the ground around it had been left wild. It was really a desolate-looking place.

"Why, there isn't any yard!" exclaimed Nelly.

"Yard!" said her mother; "why, it is all yard, child. As far as you can see in every direction, it is all our yard."

Mrs. March's heart had really sunk within her at the sight of the place. The house was nothing more than she would have called a shanty at home; but she was resolved, no matter what happened to them, never to let her husband see that she found any thing hard. So she spoke cheerfully about the yard; and, as they were getting out of the wagon, she said:—

"How nice and open it is here! See, Robert, the sun is still an hour high, I should think. This is a lovely place."

Mr. March shook his head. He did not like the appearance of things. Mrs. Plummer had bustled ahead into the house. In a moment she came back, followed by a man. This was the man who had been left by Mr. Garland in charge of the house, and who was to stay and work for Mr. March.

"Bless my eyes!" he exclaimed; "you've took me by surprise. I hain't had no letter from Garland. He said he'd write and let me know when you'd be up. I calculated to have spruced up considerable before you come in. We've bached it here so long 'tain't much of a place for wimmen folks to come to."

"Oh, never mind!" said Mrs. March; "Mr."—she hesitated for a name; "I don't think I've heard your name—"

"Zeb, ma'am; Zeb's my name. Don't go by any other name since I've been in these mountains," said the man, pulling off his old woollen cap, and making an awkward bow to Mrs. March, whose pleasant smile and voice had won his liking at once.

"Never mind, then, Zeb," Mrs. March continued: "we have not come expecting to find things as we had them at home. We shall call it a picnic all the time."

"Well, that's about what it is, mum, most generally in this country's fur's I've seen it," said Zeb, thinking at that moment, with a dreadful misgiving, that he had no meat in the house, except salt pork; and no bread at all. He had intended to make some soda biscuit for his own supper. "But she looks like jest one o' them kind that can't abide soda," thought poor Zeb to himself. "An' where in thunder be they all to sleep?" he continued; "Garland might ha' known better than to let six folks come down on me, this way, without any warnin'. 'Twas mighty unconsiderate of him! However, 'tain't none o' my business. I don't keep no hotel."

While Zeb was pursuing this uncomfortable train of thought, he was helping Deacon Plummer and Mr. March unharness the horses; he seemed silent, and, Mr. March thought, surly; but it was in reality only his distress at not being able to make the family more comfortable. Finally he spoke.

"Did Garland tell you he'd written?"

"Oh, yes!" said Mr. March; "he said he'd written, and you would be looking out for us."

"Well, perhaps he wrote, and perhaps he didn't. It's as likely as not he didn't. At any rate, if he did, the letter's down in that Manitou post-office. I hain't never seen it: an' I may as well tell you first as last, that I ain't no ways ready for ye. There ain't but two beds in the whole house. I was a calculatin' to bring up one more from the Springs next week; an' I hain't got much in the way of provisions, either, except for the hosses. There's plenty of oats, an' that's about all there is plenty of."

Deacon Plummer and Mr. March were standing in the barn door: the Deacon thrust his hands deep down in his pockets and whistled. Mr. March looked at Zeb's face. The more he studied it, the better he liked it.

"Zeb," said he, "we can stay, somehow, can't we? We men can sleep on the hay for a few nights, if the sleeping's all. What have you really got in the way of food? That's the main thing."

It pleased Zeb to have Mr. March say "we men." "I guess he's got some stuff in him, if he is a parson," thought Zeb; and his face brightened as he replied:

"Well, if you can sleep on the hay, it's all right about the sleepin'; but I didn't reckon you could. But that's only part o' the trouble. However, I can jump on to a hoss and ride down to Manitou and pick up suthin', if the wimmen folks think they can get along."

"Get along! of course we can get along!" exclaimed Mrs. March, who had just come out in search of her husband. "There is an iron pot and a tea-kettle and a frying-pan and a barrel of flour and a firkin of Graham meal; what more do we want?" and she laughed merrily.

"Hens, mamma, hens! There are lots of hens here!" shouted Rob, coming up at full speed; "and see this splendid shepherd dog! He knows me already! See! he follows me!" and Rob held his hand high up in the air to a beautiful black and white shepherd dog who was running close behind him.

"Yes; Watch, he's real friendly with everybody," said Zeb. "He's lots o' company, Watch is. He knows more'n most folks. Here, Watch! give us your paw?"

The dog lifted one paw and held it out.

"No, not that one—the white one!" said Zeb.

Watch dropped the black paw, and held up the white one instantly.

"He'll do that just's often's you'll ask him," said Zeb; "an' it's a mighty queer thing for a dog to know black from white."

"Oh! let me try him?" said Rob, "Here, Watch! Watch!" Watch ran to Rob at once.

"He does take to you, that's a fact," said Zeb.

"Give your paw, Watch,—your white paw," said Rob.

Watch put his white paw in Rob's hand.

"Now your black paw," said Rob.

Watch put down his white paw and lifted the other.

"White, black!—white, black!" said Rob, as fast as he could pronounce the words; and, just as fast as he said them, the dog held up his paws.

At this moment, Nelly appeared, her cheeks very red, carrying a little yellow and white puppy in her arms.

"Oh! see this dear little puppy!" she said; "doesn't he just match Pumpkinseed?"

"We might call him Pumpkin Blossom," said Mrs. March.

"His name's Trotter," said Zeb. "He's jest got it learned: I guess you can't change it very easy. Put him down, miss, and I'll show you what he can do. I hain't taught him much yet; he's such a pup: but there's nothin' he can't learn. Trotter, roll over!"

The puppy lay down instantly and rolled over and over. "Faster!" said Zeb.

Trotter rolled faster. "Faster! faster! fast as you can!" cried Zeb; and Trotter rolled so fast that you could hardly see his legs or his tail; he looked like a round ball of yellow hair, with two bright eyes in it.

Nelly and Rob shouted with laughter, and even Mr. March and Deacon Plummer laughed hard. They had been so busy that they had not observed that it was growing dark. Suddenly Zeb looked up, and said:—

"Ye'd better run in: it's going to be a snow flurry."

"A snow flurry!" exclaimed Mrs. March, looking up at the bright blue sky overhead. "Where's the snow to come from?"

"Out o' that cloud, mum," replied Zeb, pointing to a black cloud just coming up over the top of the hill to the west. "'T'll be here in less than five minutes; mebbe 't'll be hail: reckon 't will."

Sure enough, in less than five minutes the cloud had spread over their heads, and the hail began to fall. They all stood at the windows and watched it. Rattle, rattle, it came on the roof and against the west windows, and the hailstones bounded off from every place they hit, and rolled about on the ground like marbles. At first they were very small: not bigger than pins' heads; but larger and larger ones came every minute, until they were as big as large plums. Rob and Nelly had never seen such hailstones; they were half frightened, and yet the sight was so beautiful to watch, that they enjoyed it. The storm did not last more than ten minutes; the hailstones grew smaller again, just as they had grown larger; and then they came slower and slower, till they stopped altogether, and the great black cloud rolled off toward the south and left the sky clear blue above their heads, just as it was before; and the sun shone out, and every thing glistened like silver from the boughs of the trees down to the blades of grass. The great hailstones were piled up in all the hollow places of the ground, but the hot sun shining on them began to melt them immediately; and, except where they were in the shadow of rocks or trees or piles of boards, they did not last long. Nelly picked up a tin pan and ran out and filled it in a minute: then she passed them round to everybody, saying: "Won't you have some sugared almonds?" and they all ate them and pretended they were candy; and Rob and Nelly rolled them away from the doorstep and made Trotter run after them. In less than ten minutes after the storm had passed, it was so warm that they were all standing in the open doorway, or walking about out of doors.

"Upon my word, what a country this is!" said Mr. March. "Ten minutes ago it was winter; now it is spring."

"Yes," said Zeb. "That's jest the way 'tis all through the winter; but next month ye'll get some winter in good airnest. April 'n' May's our winter months. I've seen the snow a foot 'n' a half deep in this Pass in May."

"What!" exclaimed Mr. March, now really excited. "A foot and a half of snow! What becomes of the cattle then?"

"Oh!" said Zeb, "it never lays long: not over a day or two. This sun'll melt snow's quick's a fire'll melt grease, 'n' quicker."

"Then I suppose it is very muddy," said Mrs. March.

"No, mum, never no mud to speak of; sometimes a little stretch of what they call adobe land'll be putty muddy for a week or so; but's a general thing the roads are dry in a day; in fact, you'll often see the ground white with a little sprinkle of snow at eight o'clock in the morning, and by twelve you'll see the roads dry, except along the edges: the snow jest kind o' goes off in the air here; it don't seem's if it melted into water at all."

"Well, I'll give it up!" said the Deacon; "near's I can make out, this country's a conundrum."

Mrs. March and Mrs. Plummer now set themselves to work in good earnest to put the little house in order. They had brought with them only what they could carry in valises and hand-bags: all their boxes and trunks were to come in a big wagon the next day; so there was not much unpacking to be done. The house had only five rooms in it: one large room, which was to be used as the kitchen and dining-room and living-room; three small rooms which were for bedrooms; and another room which had been used as a lumber-room. As soon as Mrs. March looked into this room, she resolved to make it into a little sitting-room by and by. It had one window to the east, which looked out on the brook, and one to the south, which had a most beautiful view down the Pass. These rooms had no plaster on the walls, and the boards were very rough; but the Colorado pine is such a lovely shade of yellow that rooms built of bare boards are really prettier than most of the rooms you see which have paper on them.

Poor Mrs. Plummer thought these bare boards were dreadful. She worked on, industriously, helping Mrs. March do all she could; but every few minutes she would give a great sigh, and look up at the walls, or down at the floor, and say:—

"Well, Mrs. March! I never did expect to see you come to this."

Mr. March also wore rather a long face as he stood in the doorway and watched his wife.

"Oh, Sarah!" he said, at last, "I can't bear to have you work like this. I didn't realize it was going to be just such a place. I shall go to the Springs to-morrow and get a servant for you."

"You won't do any such thing, Robert," said Mrs. March. "There's no room for a servant to sleep in; and I don't want one, any way. Mrs. Plummer will give me all the help I need; and Rob and Nelly will help too. Look at Rob now!" At that minute, Rob came puffing and panting in at the door, with his arms full of crooked sticks, stems of vines, and all sorts of odds and ends of drift-wood, which he had picked up on the edge of the brook.

"Here's kindling wood, mamma; lots of it. Zeb told me where to get it. There's lots and lots all along the brook." And he threw down his armful on the hearth, and was going back for more.

"Dear boy! here is enough, and more than enough," said Mrs. March. "You can bring me some water next; we dip it out of the brook, I suppose."

"Now, mamma, that's just all you know about it," replied Rob, with a most exultant air of superiority; "there's just the nicest spring, right across the brook, only a little bit of ways. Zeb showed me; you come and see,—there's a bridge."

Mrs. March followed him. Sure enough, there was a nice, fresh spring, bubbling up out of the ground, among the bushes; it was walled around with boards a few feet high, so that the cattle should not trample too close to it; a narrow plank was laid across the brook just opposite it; and it was twenty steps from the house.

"See, mamma," said Rob, as he dipped in the pail, and drew it out dripping full, "see how nice this is. I can bring you all the water you want."

"Take care! take care, Rob!" shouted his father, as Rob stepped back on the plank. He was too late. Rob in his excitement had stepped a little to one side of the middle of the plank; it tipped; he lost his balance, and over he went, pail of water and all, into the brook. The brook was not deep, and he scrambled out again in less than a minute,—much mortified and very wet. Mrs. March could not help laughing.

"Well, you helped fill the brook instead of my pail; didn't you?" she said.

"But, mamma, I haven't got any dry clothes," said poor Rob: "what'll I do?"

"That's a fact, Rob," said his mother. "You'll have to go to bed while these dry."

"Oh, dear!" said Rob; "that's too bad!" And he walked very disconsolately toward the house. Zeb was just riding off, with two empty sacks hanging from his saddle pommel.

"Zeb," called Rob; "I tumbled in the brook; and I've got to go to bed till my clothes are dry."

"Don't you do no such a thing," cried Zeb; "you jest walk round a leetle lively, and your clothes'll be dry afore ye know it. Water don't wet ye much in this country."

"Come, now, Zeb," said the Deacon, "let's draw a line somewhere! That's a little too big a story. I can believe ye about the snow's not making mud, because I've seen these hailstones just melt away into nothin' in half an hour; but when it comes to water's not wettin', I can't go that."

"Well, you just feel of me now!" shouted Rob; "I'm half dry already!"

The Deacon and Mrs. March both felt Rob's arms and shoulders.

"Pon my word, they ain't so very wet," said the Deacon; "was it only just now you tumbled in?"

"Not five minutes ago," said Mrs. March.

"It is certainly the queerest thing I ever saw," she continued, feeling Rob from his shoulders to his ankles: "he is really, as he says, half dry. I'll try Zeb's advice. Rob, run up and down the road as hard as you can for ten minutes; don't you stand still at all."

Rob raced away, with Watch at his heels, and Mr. and Mrs. March walked into the house, Mr. March carrying the pail filled once more with the nice spring water. In a few minutes, as they were busily at work, they heard a sound at the door: they looked up; there stood a white cow, looking in on them with a mild expression of surprise.

"Oh!" said Mr. March, "Zeb said the cows'd be coming home pretty soon. The Deacon and I'll have to milk."

"Yes, they're a comin'," called out the Deacon, peering over the back of the white cow, and pushing her gently to one side, so that he could enter the door; "they're a comin' down the road, and down the hill up there back o' the sawmill: I jest wish ye'd come and look at 'em. Don't know as ye'd better, either, if ye want to have a good appetite for your supper! If ever ye see Pharaoh's lean kine, ye'll see 'em now."

Mr. and Mrs. March and Mrs. Plummer all ran out and stood in front of the house, looking up the road. There came the cows, one, two, three, all in single file, down the hill, now and then stopping to take a nibble by the way; in the road there were half a dozen more, walking straight on, neither turning to the right nor the left.

"That's right, ye poor things: make for the barn; I would if I was you. Perhaps I won't feed you a good feed o' hay 'n' corn-meal to-night, sure's my name's Plummer!" The cows were indeed lean: you could count every rib on their bodies, and their hip bones stuck out like great ploughshares.

"What a shame!" exclaimed Mrs. March. "Husband, you were imposed upon. These cows are not worth any thing."

"Oh, yes they be; they're first-rate stock," said the Deacon; "first-rate stock, only they're so run down. Ye'll see I'll have 'em so fat in four weeks ye won't know 'em."

The cows gathered together in a little group between the two barns, and looked very hard at these strangers they had never seen before. They knew very well that something had happened,—they missed Zeb,—and began to low uneasily; but when Deacon Plummer came out of the barn with a big pitchfork full of hay, and threw it down before them, all their anxieties were allayed. These were good friends who had come: there was no doubt of that. Nine times the Deacon brought out his pitchfork full of hay, and threw it on the ground, one for each cow: and didn't they fall to and eat!

"H'm!" said the Deacon, as he watched them. "If this is the result of your fine winter grazin', I don't want any thing to do with it. It's just slow starvation to my way o' thinking. Look at them udders! There ain't a quart apiece in 'em. Our milkin' 'll be soon over, Parson."

"The sooner the better for me, Deacon," laughed Mr. March. "I never did like to milk."

"Oh! let me milk! let me milk, papa! please do!" cried Rob, who had returned from his ten minutes' run on the road, as dry as ever.

"And me, too! me too!" said Nelly, who was close behind.

"Not to-night, children. It is late, and we are in a hurry," said Mr. March. Just as he spoke, the sun sank behind the hill. Almost instantly, a chill fell on the air.

"Bless me," said Mr. March, "here we have winter again. Run in, children; it is growing too cold for you to be out. What a climate this is, to be sure! one can't keep up with it."

While Deacon Plummer and Mr. March were milking, they talked over their prospects. They were forced to acknowledge that there was small chance of making a living on this farm.

"We're took in: that's all there is on't," said the Deacon, cheerily; "but I reckon we can grub along for six months; we can live that long even if we don't make a cent; and now we're here, we can look about for ourselves, and see what we're gettin' before we make another move."

"Yes," said Mr. March. "That's the only way to do. I confess I am disappointed. Mr. Garland seemed such a fair man."

The Deacon laughed. "Ye don't know human nature, Parson, the way we men do that's knockin' round all the time among folks. Ye see folks always comes to you when they're in trouble, or else when they're joyful,—bein' married, or a baptizin' their babies,—or somethin' o' ruther that's out o' the common line; so you don't never see 'em jest exactly's they are. Now I kinder mistrusted that Garland from the fust. He was too anxious to sell, to suit me. When a man's got a first-rate berth, he ain't generally so ready to quit."

When the milkers went in with their pails of milk, they found a blazing fire on the hearth, and supper set out on a red pine table without any table-cloth. Mrs. March had made Graham biscuit and white biscuit, and had baked some apples which she had left in her lunch-basket. When she saw the milk, she exclaimed:—

"Now, if this isn't a supper fit for a king!—bread and milk and baked apples!"

"Ain't there any butter?" called out Rob.

"Yes, there is some butter; but I doubt if you will eat it," said Mrs. March. "Zeb is going to buy some better butter at Manitou."

Rob put some of the butter on his bread, and put a mouthful of the bread in his mouth. In less than a second, he had clapped his hand over his mouth with an expression of horror.

"Oh, what'll I do, mamma? it's worse than medicine!" he cried; and swallowed the whole mouthful at one gulp. "That can't be butter, mamma," he said. "You've made a mistake. It'll poison us: it's something else."

"Little you know about bad butter, don't you, Rob?" said Deacon Plummer, calmly buttering his biscuit, and eating it. "I've eaten much worse butter than this."

Rob's eyes grew big. "What'd you eat it for?" he said, earnestly.

"Sure enough," said Mrs. Plummer. "That's what I've always said about butter. If there's any thing else set before folks that's bad, why they just leave it alone. There isn't any need ever of eating what you don't like. But when it comes to butter, folks seem to think they've got to eat it, good, bad, or indifferent."

"That's so," said the Deacon; "and if I've heard you say so once, Elizy, I've heard you say it a thousand times; I don't know how 'tis, but it does seem as if you had to have somethin' in shape o' butter, if it's ever so bad, to make a meal go down."

"I don't see how bad butter helps to make a meal go down," said Rob. "It like to have made mine come up just now."

"Rob, Rob!" said his mother, reprovingly; "you forget that we are at supper."

"Excuse me, mamma," said Rob, penitently; "but it was true."

CHAPTER VI

LIFE AT GARLAND'S

This was the first night of the Marches and Plummers in their strange new home in Colorado. When they waked up the next morning, Mr. March and Deacon Plummer rolled up in buffalo robes on the hay in the barn, Mrs. March and Nelly in one bed in one little bedroom, Mrs. Plummer in another opening out of it, and Rob on an old black leather sofa in the kitchen, they could hardly believe their eyes as they looked around them. They all got up very early, and now their new life had begun in good earnest. Immediately after breakfast, Mr. March drove away in the big wagon with Fox and Pumpkinseed. He would not tell his wife where he was going, nor take any one with him. The truth was, that in the night Mr. March had taken two resolutions: one was that he would get a servant for Mrs. March; the other was that he would buy furniture enough to make the house pleasant and comfortable, and china enough to make their table look a little like their old home table. But he knew if he told Mrs. March what he meant to do, she would think they ought not to spend the money. All their own pretty china which they had used at home, she had packed up and left behind them, saying: "We shall not want any thing of that kind in Colorado." Mrs. March did not care about such things half so much as Mr. March and Nelly did; that is, she could do without them more easily. She liked pretty things very much, but she could do without them very well if it were necessary. She watched Mr. March driving off down the road this morning with an uneasy feeling.

"I don't know what Mr. March's got in his head," she said to Mrs. Plummer; "but I think he is going to do something rash. He looks as children do when they are in some secret mischief."

"Why, what could it be?" said good Mrs. Plummer. "I don't see what there is for him to do."

"Well, we shall see," said Mrs. March. "I wish I'd made him take me along."

"Made him!" exclaimed Mrs. Plummer. "Can you make him do any thing he's sot not to? I hain't never been able to do that with Mr. Plummer, not once in all the thirty years I've lived with him. It's always seemed to me that men was the obstinatest critters made, even the best on 'em; an' I'm sure Mr. Plummer's as good a man's ever was born; but I don't no more think o' movin' him if his mind's made up, than I should think o' movin' that rock up there," pointing to a huge rock which was at the top of one of the hills to the southwest of the house.

The day flew by quickly in putting their new home in order. Both Mrs. March and Mrs. Plummer worked very hard, and Rob and Nelly helped them. They swept and washed floors; they washed windows; they washed even the chairs and tables,—which sadly needed it, it must be owned. Rob and Nelly enjoyed it all as a frolic.

"This is like last Christmas, when Sarah was drunk: isn't it, mamma?" said Rob. "It's real fun."

"Don't you wish Sarah was here to help you, mamma?" said Nelly.

"No, dear," replied Mrs. March, "I do not. I would rather do all the work ourselves, and save the money."

"Are we very, very, very poor, mamma?" said Nelly, with a distressed face.

"Oh, no, dear! not so bad as that," laughed Mrs. March; "but papa's salary has all stopped now, as I explained to you; and that was the greater part of our income: and, till we have more money coming in regularly from something out here, we must spend just as little as possible."

Just before dinner, Rob came in with a big armful of kindling-wood, and on the top of the wood he carried a long piece of a beautiful green vine.

"Oh, Rob, Rob, let me see that! Where did you find it?" said his mother.

"Upon the hills, mamma, back of the saw-mill. There's oceans of it up there."

"There is oceans, Rob?" said his mother.

"There are oceans, then! You knew what I meant. It's just like a carpet; and you can pull up great, long pieces of it: it comes up just as easy as any thing."

Mrs. March turned the vine over and over in her hands. It had a small glossy leaf, like the leaf of the box. Some of the long, slender tendrils of it were bright red.

"The leaf is so thick I think it would keep a long time," said Mrs. March. "I wish you and Nelly would bring me several armfuls of it. I'll tack it up all round the room: the walls won't look so bare, then."

"Oh, goody!" said the children; "that's just like Christmas." And they ran off as fast as they could go. In an hour they had heaped the whole floor with piles of the vine. The more they brought, the more beautiful it looked: the leaves shone like satin, and there were great mats of it nearly two yards long. Mrs. March had never seen it before, and did not know its name. Afterward she found out that it was the kinnikinnick vine, and that the Indians used it to smoke in their pipes. Some of the branches had beautiful little red berries like wintergreen berries on them. Nelly sorted these all out by themselves; then Mrs. March stood up on a chair, and some of the time on a table, and nailed a thick border of these vines all round the top of the room; then she took the branches which had red berries on them; and, wherever there was an upright beam in the wall, she nailed on one of these boughs with the red berries and let it hang down just as it would. Then she trimmed the fireplace and the door and the windows. It took her about two hours to do it. When it was all done, you would hardly have known the room. It looked lovely: the yellow pine boards looked much prettier with the green of the vines than any paper in the world could have looked. Rob and Nelly fairly danced with delight.

"Oh, mamma! mamma! it's prettier than any Christmas we ever had: isn't it?"

"Yes," said Mrs. March; "if the vines will only last, it is all we need to keep our walls pretty till summer time."

"Well, I never!" said Zeb, who came in at that moment. "If wimmen folks don't beat all! Why, mum, ye look's if you was goin' to have an ice-cream festival."

Zeb's only experience of rooms decorated with green vines had been when he had attended ice-cream festivals, given by churches to raise money.

"Well, we'll have one some day, Zeb," said Mrs. March, laughing; "and we won't charge you any thing. I can make very good ice-cream."

"Oh, to-night! to-night! mamma," exclaimed the children.