“All the rest of us,” I answered, “will take care of her.”
“No doubt,” she replies, “as far as you go in your odd rig,” facetiously.
Our wheels turn slowly and silently. Then with a low tinkling of the strain, “Good Bye, Sweet Heart,” Mae had slipped her music box in one, wound to that harmony.
We are Californians and take the C. P. railroad for our eastward route, our wheels being grooved to fit the track. Speeding merrily, we give vent to our imaginations of coming events.
“Will there really be a pole, Auntie?”
“That is for us to find out, dear. I sometimes think there is a stem there covered with ice, that holds the earth to an apple planet tree.”
“But the astronomers would have seen the tree,” argues my father.
“They could not look so far. Only as far as the other star apples. May not the Milky Way be a branch?” I suggest.
We now become aware that a train is approaching on the single track that is hanging over the grade on the canyon side. We have no choice but to unfurl our wings and rise in the air, as the engineer wildly blows his whistle. Brushing the pine tree tops, we cross over the peak and seek the track on the other side of it, selecting an opening in a thicket for that purpose.
Finding it occupied by miners digging away, we hallo, when they look every way but up, as we land in their midst as though dropped from the sky. Their consternation is depicted in set jaws, as we give military salute and roll off.