“We’re going to Oregon; that’s what,” exclaimed Harry, who was as impulsive as he was noisy.
“How did you come to know so much?” asked Marjorie, the youngest of John Ranger’s “Three Graces,” as he was wont to style his trio of eldest daughters, who had persisted in coming into his household—much to his discomfort—before the advent of Harry, the fourth in his catalogue of seven, of whom only two were boys.
“I get my learning by studying o’ nights!” answered Hal, in playful allusion to his success as a sound sleeper, especially during study hours.
“Of course you don’t want to emigrate, Miss Mame,” cried Jean, “but you can’t help yourself, unless you run away and get married; and then you’ll have to help everybody else through the rest of your life and take what’s left for yourself,-if there’s anything left to take! At least, that is mother’s and Aunt Mary’s lot.”
“Jean speaks from the depths of long experience,” laughed Mary, blushing to the roots of her hair.
“I’m sick to death of this cold kitchen,” cried Jean, snapping her tea-towel in the frosty air of the unplastered lean-to. “Hurrah for Oregon! Hurrah for a warmer climate, and a snug cabin home among the evergreen trees!”
“Good for Jean!” exclaimed her father. “The weather’ll be so mild in Oregon we shall not need a tight kitchen.”
“Is Oregon a tight house?” asked three-year-old Bobbie, whose brief life had many a time been clouded by the complaints of his mother and sisters,—complaints such as are often heard to this day from women in the country homes of the frontier and middle West, where more than one-half of their waking hours are spent in the unfinished and uncomfortable kitchens peculiar to the slave era, in which—as almost any makeshift was considered “good enough for niggers”—the unfinished kitchen came to stay.
The vigorous barking of Rover announced the approach of visitors; and the circle around the fireside was enlarged, amid the clatter of moving chairs and tables, to make room for Elijah Robinson and his wife,—the former a brother of Annie Ranger, and the latter a sister of John. The meeting between the sisters-in-law was expectant, anxious, and embarrassing.
“How did you like the news?” asked Mrs. Robinson, after an awkward silence.