"Maybe we'd better wait for mother and Aunt Keren to advise us," said Happie at last, sitting back on her heels with ashes on her hair and despair on her face, having vainly blown the fire through the draughts which did not draw.
"What's up?" inquired Bob entering in time to catch her suggestion. "Say, I have to wash at the pump like a farm hand! I hope that freight car will come to-day."
"We're up. So is mother—I heard her—but she isn't down," said Happie. "This fire is too much for me, Bob."
"Don't you mean it is too little for you?" suggested Bob. "I don't see how it possibly can be too much for you—there's none at all. I'll have a try at it; I learned a trick about it last night. You have to light the fire in the southeast corner of the grate—it's not cracked there."
Bob's knowledge of the geography of the cracked stove stood him in good stead, and when Miss Bradbury and Mrs. Scollard came down the fire was under way.
Miss Keren-happuch cracked her egg with a decisive blow on the edge of a saucer—her establishment did not boast an egg cup.
"That Shale stratum which brought our trunks, and Bob and Happie, last night, is going to lend himself, with the aid of Peter Kuntz, our driver, to bringing up our household goods to-day, if the car gets here, as they think it will," she said. "I never realized how appropriately one's effects might be called goods—they will indeed be goods to us in this dearth of everything. And the first thing I shall do will be to find a woman to preside over our housework, for I suspect that will be the attitude these independent farmers' wives will take towards it. Bob, perhaps you had better look after the carting, and we two Keren-happuchs, Happie my dear, will look for the woman—as the proverb advises one to do whenever there is trouble."
"Why not ask Jake Shale if he knows of one? He is coming now," suggested Mrs. Scollard. Miss Bradbury hurried out to the steps.
"What is?" the family within heard him ask. "Some one to help you out? I guess. Mebbe she might help you a little first along."
"She?" repeated Miss Bradbury.