“Ain’t any business a-livin’ in any such outlandish place anyhow,” declared Dan’s mother, stoutly, as she fanned herself, and smelled at a bottle of lavender salts. “And he should have met me here too. He never did have any consideration for his mother.”
“Didn’t you say you were going out to live with him?” asked Ted. “Doesn’t that prove he loves his mother?”
“Well, mebbe it does. Danny’s sort of pindling in small matters, and rises to the heights in others. You can depend on him. I guess it was Osceola, after all. He wrote it down for me. It’s in that handbag—no, ’tain’t. It’s in that basket, or—, wait, here it is right in my pocketbook. Osceola. Kind of a pretty name, ain’t it, now?”
“Girls, you must make haste,” called Miss Murray, and they hurried the old lady on her journey, while all she did was talk about Danny at Osceola, and alternately blame and praise him.
“It looks as if all Illinois were turned into corn and wheat fields,” said Polly, that afternoon, after miles and miles of the tender green, and beautiful, feathery corn tassels had been passed. “There’s so much of the same thing on one place out West here, isn’t there, Miss Murray?”
“Now, girls, isn’t that just like Polly!” laughed Jean.
“But I mean it. Down in Virginia the land is in patches. A corn field here, over there rye, and then a break of woodland. But out here it’s all the same thing for miles and miles.”
“Polly Page,” exclaimed Ted suddenly, coming back from the water cooler at the end of the car, “I’ve just been talking to the conductor, and he says that we took on three coaches of real homeseekers in Chicago. I didn’t know that. I’d love to see them.”
“There’s nothing to see, Ted, dear,” Jean told her. “If we could look in the hearts and read the stories there, it would be worth while, but this way you’d only see a lot of ordinary travelers.”
“Aren’t they immigrants?”