"Oh!" said Draxy; she had hardly observed the mention of that feature in the Elder's household, and she laughed outright. Her ideas of the ancestral savage were too vague to be very alarming. "If she has lived all these years with this good old minister, she must be civilized and kind," said Draxy. "I'm not afraid of her."
"But I think it would be a great deal better for me to go first," she continued, more and more impressed with the new idea. "Then I can be sure beforehand about everything, and get things all in order for you; and there'll be Mr. Kinney to take care of me; I feel as if he was a kind of father to everybody." And Draxy in her turn began to wonder about the Elder's appearance as he had wondered about hers. Her mental picture was quite as unlike the truth as was his. She fancied him not unlike her father, but much older, with a gentle face, and floating white hair. Dim purposes of how she might make his lonely old age more cheerful, floated before her mind. "It must be awful," thought she, "to live years and years all alone with an Indian."
When Elder Kinney read Reuben's letter, saying that they would send their daughter up first to decide what would be best for them to do, he brought his hand down hard on the table and said "Whew!" again.
"Well, I do declare," thought he to himself, "I'm afraid they're dreadful shiftless folks, to send that girl way up here, all alone by herself; and how's such a child's that goin' to decide anything, I should like to know?"
He read again the letter Reuben had written. "My daughter is very young, but we lean upon her as if she was older. She has helped us bear all our misfortunes, and we have more confidence in her opinions than in our own about everything." The Elder was displeased.
"Lean on her;' I should think you did! Poor little girl! Well, I can look out for her; that's one comfort." And the Elder wrote a short note to the effect that he would meet their "child" at the railway station, which was six miles from their town; that he would do all he could to help her; and that he hoped soon to see Mr. and Mrs. Miller under his roof.
The words of the note were most friendly, but there was an indefinable difference between it and all the others, which Draxy felt without knowing that she felt it, and her last words to her father as she bade him good-by from the car window were: "I don't feel so sure as I did about our staying with Mr. Kinney, father. You leave it all to me, do you, dear, even if I decide to buy a house?"
"Yes, daughter," said Reuben, heartily; "all! Nothing but good's ever come yet of your way o' doin' things."
"An' I don't in the least hanker after that Injun," he called out as the cars began to move. Draxy laughed merrily. Reuben was a new man already. They were very gay together, and felt wonderfully little fear for people to whom life had been thus far so hard.
There was not a misgiving in Draxy's heart as she set out again on a two days' journey to an unknown place. "Oh how different from the day when I started before," she thought as she looked out on the water sparkling under the bright May sun. She spent the first night, as before, at the house of Captain Melville's brother, and set out at eight the following morning, to ride for ten hours steadily northward. The day was like a day of June. The spring was opening early; already fruit-trees were white and pink; banks were green, and birds were noisy.