“Now, Marty!”
“I’ll bet it’s something that’ll make Dad and me work, and we got that addition to the wagon-shed to finish,” and the boy grinned slily as he stooped, piling the wood neatly into the woodbox. There was a change in Marty. Formerly, if he had brought the wood in at all, he would have flung it helter-skelter into the box and run.
“I don’t see,” said Janice thoughtfully, “why you really need that new wagon-shed. And it’s only big enough for one vehicle.”
“Huh!” grunted Marty. “Don’t you like the looks of it?”
“Why—yes; it’s all right. Uncle Jason is a fine carpenter. But I don’t just see the use of it.”
“Mebbe we’re building it to keep that elephant in Uncle Brocky is going to send you—he, he!” chortled Marty, who seemed to be so full of “tickle” that he could not hold the expression of it in.
“Now! I wish you wouldn’t be so ridiculous, Marty Day,” declared Janice, more soberly. “You know Daddy will send me something nice. He says it is something to make me forget my loneliness for him. As though anything could do that!
“For two years, now, he has been down at that hateful mine in Mexico,” continued the girl, with a sigh, and speaking to herself more than to her cousin. “It seems a lifetime. And he says he may have to stay a long time yet.”
“Well, he’s making money,” said Marty bluntly. “Wish I had his chance.”
“Money isn’t everything,” said Janice earnestly. “It does seem as though there ought to be some other man in the mining company who could keep things running down there in Chihuahua, as well as keep peace with both the Constitutionalists and the Federals, and let Daddy take a vacation.