Between them there had again fallen one of those long silences they dreaded, but seemed powerless to prevent. As the voice of the turtledove was lifted in the plaintive notes of nesting time, Adam harrowed three acres of the plowed land and planted it in wheat and corn. The perennial garden was flourishing, and there was nothing to do. Adam said so one day, with an air of calm finality.
Robin regarded him uneasily. The time had not yet come when he could sit down and write, though she had brewed an excellent ink, and the paper waited on the desk in his room. She considered for a moment, then said brightly, "Don't you remember what Myron used to say? How when his friends got rich they first built a beautiful house, and then went abroad for three years? Let us go traveling; wouldn't you like it?"
The alacrity with which he acquiesced proved how well he liked it, and he started out at once to get the burros, and make ready for the expedition.
Robin baked and prepared as well as she could.
"It's a good thing I had a Southern grandmother," she soliloquized, as she put her beaten biscuit in the Dutch oven and pulled the coals over it. "And it's a good thing my mother crossed the plains and learned how to make biscuit in the mouth of her flour sack, and," as she rolled out some crackers, "it is a blessed good thing I went to cooking-school, but I wish that, instead of being so particular about the knobs on the candlesticks, the Pentateuch had given Sarah's recipe for making cakes with honey. Not that I have any honey, but I am sure we shall find some on this trip."
When they were all ready, and the burros stood waiting at the door, with Lassie jumping wildly about them, Adam wrote a placard which he stuck in the framework of the door. The stock had been turned loose on the mountain-side, and the house and stables secured as well as possible against any storms that might arise. The kittens had possession of one of the sheds. The puppies were to accompany them.
Robin had put on her long unused shoes, and a new gown that she had made out of a dark blue serge found hanging in her room. Adam looked at her approvingly from under his wide sombrero. She turned back, after going a few paces, and read the card.
WAIT!
April 5th.
Back in two weeks.