Nelly turned her great dark eyes full on Long Billy when he said this. Her face grew very sad: she understood exactly what he meant. Rob did not understand. He looked only puzzled.
"Graves!" exclaimed he. "Why, what do you call them graves for, Billy? There isn't any thing buried in them."
Billy looked a little ashamed of his speech; he did not often indulge in anything so much like a flight of fancy as this.
"Oh, nothin'!" he said. "That's only a silly way o' puttin' it."
"I don't think so, Billy," said Nelly. "I think it's real true. Don't you know, Rob, how awfully you and I felt when we thought we'd found that mine up in the Pass, and it turned out nothing but mica? We felt just as if we'd lost something."
"I didn't," said Rob; "I just felt mad; and it makes me feel mad now to think of it: how we lugged those heavy old stones all that way. I wish I'd saved some for my museum though. All the boys here have museums, a man told me, and perhaps I won't find any of that kind of stone here."
After dinner, they all drove down into the valley to look at their new home. The road wound down in a zigzag way among a great many low hills. Sometimes for quite a distance among these hills, you cannot see the valley at all; and then all of a sudden you look right out into it. As they went lower, they saw more and more of it, until at last they reached it and came out on the level ground, where they could look up and down the whole length of the valley. Long Billy was driving them: when they reached the spot where the whole valley lay in full view, he stopped the horses and, turning round to Mrs. March, said:—
"Well, mum, did I tell the truth or not?"
"No, Billy, you did not," replied Mrs. March, very gravely.
Billy looked surprised, and was just about to speak when Mrs. March continued:—