"'I'm thinkin',' said Albert, 'it kind o' belongs to both of us.'
"'So I think, too,' said Nancy, said she. 'Come over to my cabin and I'll cook it for ye. I'm an honest girl, I am.'
"The two went along as chipper as two squirrels. The creek looked really pretty to 'em, and the prairie was all a-glitter with frost, and the sky was all pleasant-like, and you know the rest. There, now. They're livin' there yet. Just like poetry—wasn't it, now?"
"Very extraordinary," said the Tunker, "very! I never read a novel like that. Very extraordinary!"
A tall, lank, wiry boy came up to the door.
"Abe, I do declare!" said Aunt Olive. "Come in. I'm makin' doughnuts, and you sha'n't have one of them. I make Scriptur' doughnuts, and the Scriptur' says if a man spends his time porin' over books, of which there is no end, neither shall he eat, or somethin' like that—now don't it, elder?—But seein' it's you, Abe, and you are a pretty good boy, after all, when people are in trouble, and sick and such, I'll make you an elephant. There ain't any elephants in Injiany."
Aunt Olive cut a piece of doughnut dough in the shape of a picture-book elephant and tossed it into the fat. It swelled up to enormous proportions, and when she scooped it out with a ladle it was, for a doughnut, an elephant indeed.
"Now, Abe, there's your elephant.—And, elder, here's a whole pan full of twisted doughnuts. You said that you were goin' to meet Black Hawk. Where does he live? Tell us all about him."
"I will do so, my good woman," said Jasper. "I want you to be interested in my Indian missions. When I come this way again, I shall be likely to bring with me an Indian guide, an uncommon boy, I am told. You shall hear my story."