“Could you let her go, mother dear?”
“She’s but a bairn yet, Jeanie, lass.”
“She’s twelve, mother. I could take care of her.”
“She’s needing good schooling since they closed ours over at the Forks. I’d have to let her go to town anyway this fall, and then she’d be with strangers. You’d write often, wouldn’t you, Jeanie, and let me know just how she took to it all?”
“Twice a week regularly, mother,” Jean promised.
“And you don’t think it would be harming her any, being with girls of her own age that have all they want. We’re only plain people, Jean, lass.”
“Oh, mother, the girls at Calvert are not what the world calls wealthy. They seem so to us because we have so little in a way. We are rich in land and stock, and love, but very little real cash. It’s only a different scale of values, dear. What difference does it make whether father gives one of us a yearling or a new pony for a birthday gift, and down yonder, the Admiral gives Polly a new camera, or a necklace. It all comes to the same thing. Peggie will hold her own among them all, dear, and they will love her too. She is old enough to start in the first year. If she does realize her hopes from the discovery in old Zed’s gulch, I should let her go.”
Mrs. Murray sighed thoughtfully.
“I’ll ask father about it, Jeanie, to-night,” she said, finally, and Jean knew the fight was won already, for whatever her mother advocated, Mr. Murray unhesitatingly accepted.
Monday morning, even before the first long amber rays of sunlight pierced the clouds over towards Bear Lodge, the girls were up and dressed. The sheep wagon was ready, well-provisioned, and made comfortable as could be for the trip. Behind it was the grub wagon, loaded with the tents, stove, bedding, and heavier camp supplies. Mr. Murray drove this wagon, and Jean or her mother took turns at the sheep cart. It was quite a formidable pack-train that went slowly out by the valley trail at sunrise. Sally Lost Moon stood in the doorway, with the sheepdogs around her, waving good-bye with her apron till they passed out of sight, and Don, too, waved a last salute. Archie and Neil were at work up beyond the buttes, and they could not see them.