“Look, Abe!” said Nancy in sudden excitement, pointing to an approaching vehicle.
Abe followed the direction of his sister’s finger, and he opened his eyes in astonishment. A large four-horse team was in sight—a strange and unusual spectacle in that wilderness. The children could not have been more excited if Barnum’s grand procession of circus chariots had filed into view—a vision of Oriental splendor.
“There’s father!” exclaimed Abe, distinguishing with a boy’s keen vision the well-known figure of his father sitting beside the driver.
“Father and Uncle Ralph,” corrected Nancy.
“And the team’s full of furniture. Can it be comin’ here?”
“I reckon your new mother’s aboard,” said Dennis.
This remark made the children thoughtful, because it recalled their own sad-faced and gentle mother who had faded from life a year before and gone uncomplainingly to her rest. Then, besides, the prospect of a step-mother is apt to be disquieting when nothing is known of her disposition or character.
“Is all that furniture comin’ here?” soliloquized Nancy wonderingly.
“I reckon so,” answered Abe.
When the team came nearer another exciting discovery was made. There were others aboard the wagon besides their father, their new mother, and their uncle Ralph Krame, who was the owner of the team. There were two girls and a boy, children of Mrs. Lincoln by her former marriage. They were not far from the same age as the three children who were awaiting their arrival, but they were much better dressed. It was clear that the log-cabin would no longer be lonely. It would be full and running over. The six children and their parents were to be crowded into it.