"Get her a fresh towel," said mother, amused. So Ruth Gaynor and I dried the dishes the first time we saw each other, and with that began a great friendship.
"You'll do for a housekeeper," commented mother. "What a sweet little thing you are! Why I think I shall have to buy you of your father."
"Oh, he couldn't spare me, could you, father?"
She ran and slipped on his knee and put her arms about his neck.
"No, little one," he made answer.
I sat on the end of the bench looking at them, and envying him. I wondered how the soft arms would feel about my neck, the rose-leaf cheek pressed against mine. I was past fifteen and not over fond of browsing about and noisy games, though I was well grown and strong. I liked to read and dream, and I was fond of hearing the men talk when they did not swear too much, or call each other fools too often. I did enjoy their aspirations about Chicago and the boundless west. Chicago was even then an entrepôt for St. Louis, and also the Mississippi, from upper Michigan with its endless stack of furs to Canada, and from thence to Europe. When all these great reaches were waving cornfields and wheat fields, and there should be a port extensive enough to accommodate them all, a gate through which the treasures of the earth and rain and sun should pass, and the gold and silver of the world return!
Well, it was a splendid dream to be laughed at then. But had not voyagers a hundred years before had dreams akin to it?
The Little Girl had fallen fast asleep when her father carried her in. It was very foolish, but I wished I could have kissed the soft, slightly parted smiling lips as mother had.
Mother lighted them into the new part, where there was a small sleeping chamber off the best room which, no doubt, would have been called a parlor if Dan and I had been girls.
"What a sweet little thing!" mother said with a sigh. "Too nice to come to a wild town like this."