"Oh, I'm so glad!" said Nelly.
Still Mrs. March did not speak. Her husband turned to her at last, anxiously, and said:—
"Don't you like it, Sarah?"
"Oh, Robert!" she said, "it is so beautiful it doesn't look to me like a real place. It looks like a painted picture!"
"That'll do! that'll do!" laughed Mr. March; "I'm satisfied. Now we'll go down the hill."
Rob nudged Nelly. They were on the back seat of the wagon.
"Nell," he whispered, "did you ever see any thing like it? I see lots of silver mines all round on the hills. Billy told me how they looked. Those piles of stones are all on top of mines; that's where they throw out the stones. I'll bet we'll find a mine."
"Oh," said Nelly, "wouldn't that be splendid! Let's go out the first thing to-morrow morning."
Mr. March had planned to stay in Rosita a couple of days, before going down to his farm in the valley. He wished to become acquainted with some of the Rosita tradesmen, and to find out all about the best ways of doing things in this new life. Long Billy proved a good helper now. Everybody in Rosita knew Long Billy and liked him; and, when he said to his friends, confidentially:
"This is a first-rate feller I've hired with: he does the square thing by everybody, I tell you. There's nothin' narrer about him; he's the least like a parson of any parson ye ever see,"—they accepted Billy's word for it all, and met Mr. March with a friendliness which would not usually have been shown to a newcomer.