“We didn’t know. Thank you, Polly,” murmured Sue. “Doesn’t it just suit the twins? What are their names? I’ve been calling them Sis and Buddy ever since we left Washington.”
“Name’s Lafayette,” explained the boy twin, soberly. “Her name’s Columbia,” pointing a moist forefinger at his sister.
“They sort of went together,” Mrs. Timony said, peacefully. “But we do call them Sis and Buddy ’most all the time. The baby’s name’s just Faith.”
“I like that,” Ruth put in gravely. “I think people should be careful how they name children. Suppose one of the twins got on a track, and you wanted to call it away quickly. How could you say, ‘Come, Lafayette, Lafayette, Lafayette!’ It would be run over before any one could get the name all out. A short name is much better.”
“Maybe, but it’s something to have a name to live up to,” answered little Mrs. Timony, smiling restfully.
“She won’t mind living out on a new three hundred and sixty acre claim,” Miss Murray said, as they watched the little mother stroll down the aisle, when the train halted at a station. “She will take a world of comfort out of sentiment, girls. She will forget entirely the bother little Buddy is, as she thinks what sort of a State Senator he’ll be when he grows up. It’s beautiful to be built like that.”
Isabel had struck up a pleasant friendship with the invalid girl, who was bound for Colorado, and was to change cars at Omaha. Isabel promised to help her with her two suit-cases, when they reached Chicago, and Sue said she would carry Isabel’s in exchange.
“Why do the little pools of water, and even the brooks, look blue and purple along the edges?” asked Ted, who spent most of the time looking out of the window. “They look like a gas flame.”
“We are getting into the gas country, Ted,” Jean said. “Gas and oil wells stretch all along this northern edge of Indiana and Illinois. If it were night, you would see the huge oil torches blazing here and there in the darkness like the old Roman flambeaux. Wait till you see the Big Sea Water to the north in a little while.”
“Lake Michigan?” Sue asked, eagerly. “That was what Hiawatha’s people called it, wasn’t it? Oh, Polly, that makes me think, are you sure you can buy those Indian baskets and things for Mrs. Yates up where we are going?”