"Ed!" called the girl, "the next time you hitch up Barney for me, I wish you'd put a kicking-strap on him. I had a picnic with him coming down the hill by Arbuckle's."
Ed maintained the gruff silence of the half-grown rural male as he climbed into the buggy beside his sister and cramped the wheel for her to dismount.
"They haven't any quart jars over at the store, mother," said Ethel, entering the house and walking across to the mirror to remove her hat. "They're expecting some every day. Well, I do look like the Witch of Endor!" she exclaimed, twisting her loosened rope of hair and skewering it in place with a white celluloid pin. "That colt acted as if he was possessed."
"Oh, I'm sorry about the jars," said Mrs. Weaver regretfully. "I wanted to finish putting up the curr'n's to-morrow."
"Did you get any mail?" quavered grandmother Moxom.
"I got a letter from Rob."
There was a little hush in the room. The girl stood still before the mirror, with a sense of support in the dim reflection of her own face.
"Is he well?" ventured the old woman feebly, glancing toward her daughter-in-law.
"Yes, he's well; he's got steady work on some road up the mountain. He writes as if people keep going up, but he never tells what they go up for. He said something about a lot of burros, and at first I thought he was in a furniture store, but I found out he meant mules. An old man keeps them, and hires them out to people. Rob calls him 'old Mosey.' They're keeping bach together. Rob tried to make biscuits, and he says they tasted like castor oil."
As her granddaughter talked, Mrs. Moxom seemed to shrink deeper and deeper into the patchwork cushion of her chair.