“I thought that looked like a ‘botany-box,’ when I saw Dennis take it off the car, last night. Yet, I could hardly believe I saw one—here.”
“Oh! yes. We always take our things. Carlos has his hammer. My father teached him, taught him, I mean, about stones, ’cause he doesn’t care so much for flowers. Now, please tell me the story. I love stories as well as Teddy, prob’ly. Old Marta knows heaps of them but Guadalupo knows even more. Beg pardon. I’ll stop talking and listen.”
Yet Mrs. Burnham hesitated a little, trying to decide how much it was necessary Carlota should know; though impelled by the girl’s abounding sympathy to talk freely of matters usually kept to herself. Carlota helped her, laughingly:
“I know. When I want to tell a story and the words don’t come right away I always begin: ‘Once upon a time’.”
The lady smiled, took a fresh needleful of thread, turned the stocking she was darning, and began:
“Well, ‘once upon a time,’ my husband’s father died, very suddenly, leaving behind him a large debt to a rich woman from whom he had borrowed money to carry on his business—that failed. His two children, Teddy’s father and his Aunt Ella, determined to pay this debt and clear their father’s name and honor. She became a trained nurse and is now in a New York hospital. She has a fine position and good salary and is steadily putting aside part of it, toward her share of the debt. But she works very, very hard and it is a fresh trouble to Mr. Burnham that he isn’t able to provide for himself. He came west to engage in mining, and has made several ventures in that line. Until now none of them have turned out as he hoped, so he took this position till he saw his way to a fresh start. He thinks he sees now the way to leave here very soon. I hope that before we go your friends will have come for you. If not, you may have to be left with other strangers, and I thought best to prepare you; and you understand, now, why I wish you to keep all of your belongings together. But—that’s all. If you could so soon become to me like one of my own, why shouldn’t you to another just as easily.”
It was like Carlota to think first of others, nor had she fully realized the result to herself if her new friends departed before she was “called for.” The word “mining” had roused familiar ideas and she exclaimed:
“Oh! I do wish my father was here to see about Mr. Burnham’s mine! He would know in a minute if it was a good one!”
“But, deary, we have no mine—yet, nor the slightest interest in one. We are merely ‘prospecting’—”
“Beg pardon. Oh, that’s what my father does!”