"We'll have that too, sometimes."
"Maybe we won't have to wait till you grow up, Billy," said Ruth, to whom so long a vista of years seemed an eternity; "you know there's the claim. What is a claim, anyhow, Billy?"
Billy hesitated. He didn't like to show his ignorance but he was not at all sure that he knew what it meant. "It's government," he said presently, "government," he repeated more importantly.
Ruth look puzzled. It did not seem much plainer to her than before. "But how will that make us able to go into the big house?" she asked.
"Oh, they'll give a lot of money to Aunt Hester so she won't have to sew any more."
"Oh, who'll give the money, Billy? Who is 'they'?"
"Oh, I don't just know their names. Maybe the president does it or he gets somebody, some big general, to do it for him." Billy's notions of such things were very vague.
"Oh my!" Ruth was much impressed; her imagination immediately flew to the possible arrival of some magnificent creature in regimentals, riding a coal black steed. He would draw rein before the door and she would run out and open the gate for him. "Do you suppose he would know where she lives, that she's not living in the big house any more?" she asked after a moment.
"Of course." Billy spoke confidently.
He did not like to be questioned as closely as Ruth had an inconvenient way of doing, so he changed the subject.