"Well, I'm going now to have a talk with some water engineers about my spring, and attend to some other business. Do you think you can be ready to go back with me in about a week?"
"Oh, never so soon as that!" cried Mrs. Bunker. "I'll need at least two weeks to pack up."
"All right, then we'll call it two weeks. So, two weeks from to-day, at ten o'clock in the morning," said Uncle Fred, "we start for the West."
"Hurray!" cried Russ, who came in just in time to hear what his uncle said.
The next two weeks were busy ones. The six little Bunkers could not do much toward packing, though Rose, who went about the house singing, as she almost always did, helped her mother as much as she could. Russ went about whistling, but he did not help much. Instead he and Laddie made lassos out of clotheslines, and once Mrs. Bunker heard Norah, out in the kitchen, saying:
"Now you mustn't do that, Russ! I told you that you must not!"
"What's he doing, Norah?" asked Mrs. Bunker.
"He's taking forks from the table and tying them on his shoes," answered the cook.
"You mustn't do that, Russ!" exclaimed his mother. "Why are you doing such a thing? Forks on your shoes—the idea!"
"I'm playing they're spurs, Mother, like those the cowboys at Uncle Fred's ranch wear on their boots," said Russ. "Spurs are sharp and so are forks, so I thought if I tied some forks on my shoes I'd have spurs like the cowboys."