"Her, yes," said Jake. "We hain't got so much work now to our place, but she couldn't do it long."
"Oh, your wife!" exclaimed Miss Bradbury, enlightened. "If you will bring her here, I will not look for any one else. You are sure she'll come?"
"I guess," affirmed Jake. And he drove away with Bob on the seat beside him.
The family hailed them with delight reappearing at noon, seated on familiar crates piled high on the wagon. Jake not only brought his wife when he came down in the afternoon, but his elongated son of eighteen, who opened boxes industriously, but who could not be persuaded to open his mouth.
As fast as Noah Shale pried open crates, his father and Bob carried their contents to their place, and the new stove, their own chairs, rugs, and the best beloved of the pictures, which were hurried into something like order that afternoon, gave the forlorn old Ark a very different aspect by the second night from that which it had worn on the family's arrival.
Miss Bradbury surveyed her house by lamp-light—for she had bought oil—with an amused criticism that held the germ of approval.
"Who can kalsomine?" she demanded suddenly of Mrs. Jake passing out of the room to get a few sticks of wood for the hearth which to the joy of all the exiles they found in the living-room, and with a perfect draught.
"What is?" said Mrs. Shale stopping short. "I kin, fer one, and he kin, and the boy could if he wanted, and you could—most anybody, I guess, that wants to. Why did you want to know?"
"I'm going to make these walls clean, at least, upstairs and down," said Miss Bradbury, pointing to the blackened walls and ceilings which seemed to indicate that the wood-fire on the hearth had not always crackled and snapped as it was then doing.
"Make it look whiter," remarked Mrs. Shale, resuming her way with a slightly superfluous statement.