Relieved at the prospect of action, the girls sprang to their feet, dusted off the clinging sand, and scrambled up the bluff. A minute more and they were running down the hill pell mell toward the oncoming team.
They had scarcely reached the bottom of the hill when the long-eared and long-suffering animals rounded a turn in the road and ambled slowly toward them.
The driver, the same gauky, red-headed country lad who had brought them their trunks, drew rein as the fleet-footed girls reached him and swept off his crownless hat with a gallantry that left nothing to be desired.
"I'm bringing your provisions," he began, adding loquaciously, for he loved to talk and seldom got the opportunity: "Sorry I couldn't get 'em to you yesterday, but Abe up to the store took sick and he says to me, 'Jake,' he says, 'guess mebbe you'll have to be storekeeper an' delivery boy both to-day. Shake a leg,' he says, 'an' I might mebbe give you a dollar extry. You never can't tell,' he says. He's that generous like, Abe is," the boy shook his head sadly at the thought of Abe's generosity, "that he'd give a whole chicken to a kid dyin' of hunger, pervided he knowed the chicken had the pip."
The girls chuckled at this last sentence, uttered with a sort of ferocious sarcasm, even though they had been standing on one foot with impatience during the rest of his long speech.
Now, seeing that he was about to begin again, Betty cut in quickly.
"It didn't bother us a bit, you're not coming yesterday," she said, adding, as she leaned forward eagerly: "What we do want to know is—did you bring any mail?"
"Sure," he said, good-naturedly, reaching behind him for a small package of letters which Betty took eagerly. "An' there was a telegram too, came yesterday—"
"Yesterday!" Mollie interrupted with a groan. "And I'm just getting it to-day!"
"But I was telling you," he started all over again patiently, "as how Abe took sick and says to me: 'Jake—'"