“Indeed I do, you good Polly. You are a real comfort.” At which speech Polly wiped her eyes on her sleeve, for her transitions from laughter to tears were generally as sudden as the opposite.
CHAPTER III
A SEARCH
That evening Polly returned to her own home, but the M’Cleans remained at the fort, and the next day Jeanie told Agnes that her mother was bent upon going nearer to the settlement of Marietta, that, now their cabin was burned and all their stock killed, they would be better off if they went farther on.
“Near Marietta?” exclaimed Agnes. “That is where we were to have gone. If my father were only here, we might go with you and search out the land belonging to my grandfather; then we could send for my mother.” She was silent a moment. “I think,” she continued slowly, “I will do it, anyhow, as soon as—as we know the worst about my father.”
“You do it?”
“Yes, why not?”
“How could you do it alone?”
“I could get some one to help me. I would never be satisfied to stay here by myself, and how could I go back to my mother and tell her there was no home in the wide world for her and the children? There are many coming out this way, but few going back.”
“That is true. Why don’t you talk to my father about it?”