Jean exchanged furtive glances with her father, who averted his face, and said: “That’s a conundrum, Yank. Ask me something easy.”
The next noticeable entry in Jean’s diary was made on the fifth of April, and was as follows:—
“The snow this morning is four inches deep. We camped last night in the mud and slush, in a narrow lane, after a hard day’s wheeling through the miry roads. Mother, dear woman, is weary and weak, but daddie got her a warm room in the farmhouse near us, where we children are allowed to go sometimes to thaw our marrow-bones by a pleasant fire.
“April 6. Cloudy to-day, with a threat of rain. But mother urges a forward movement, so Mary and Marjorie are packing the mess-boxes, and daddie says I must write up this horrid diary. There is nothing to write about. The country through which we are struggling is swampy, monotonous, muddy, and level. Cheap, rickety farmhouses are seen at intervals; the bridges are gone from most of the swollen streams; our way goes through narrow, muddy lanes, with crooked, tumble-down fences; and we see, every now and then, a discouraged-looking woman and a lot of half-clad children peeping through open doors, from the midst of a crowd of half-starved dogs. Daddie says these frontier people (and dogs) are the forerunners of all civilization; but I think they’re the embodiment of desolation and discouragement.
“April 7. The ague has broken out among our teamsters. We stopped to-night at a farmhouse, where suspicious women treated us like so many thieves. The whole family were barefoot, and lacked everything but numbers. Mother says that starvation has aroused their cupidity, and we mustn’t mind their suspicious airs. They had no feed for sale for the stock, and no supplies to sell for our table; but there were plenty of guns and dogs,—the latter a thieving lot,—from which we shall be glad to escape when we again see morning. Weather and roads no better.
“April 8. Mother quite ill again; but the skies are clear, and she insists on moving forward.
“April 11. No food for man or beast to be had for love or money. We must move onward, sick or well.
“April 12. A better-settled region. The scenery is often fine. Pussy-willows peep at us from marshy edges, and birds are singing in the budding treetops. Sick folks no better. Bought a liberal supply of corn for the stock, and a lot of butter, eggs, and chickens for the rest of us, so we have a feast in prospect. Camped on the edge of a pretty little village, on a nice green grass-plat. Daddie took us girls to a prayer-meeting. The good people eyed us askance. Evidently they thought us freaks. Certainly our slat sunbonnets and soiled linsey-woolsey dresses were not reassuring.”
The next day, at nightfall, the party reached Quincy, on the Mississippi, and camped on a flat bit of upland outside of the city’s limits, where many other wayfarers, like themselves, had halted and encamped.