"A good deal, I assure you," asserted Mrs. Nash, with decision. "Make up your mind to be miserable and you can't fail to be so; resolve to enjoy yourself, and you're almost equally sure to do that."
"Humph!" grunted her companion, turning away with a scornful toss of the head.
"What's wrong?" asked Miss Lamar, coming toward them with her hands full of delicate spring blossoms.
"Wrong! where?" returned Mrs. Barbour, sharply, thinking the query aimed at her.
"Yonder," Nell answered, gazing anxiously in the direction of the group about the wagons; "they all seem to be busying themselves about that wheel."
"There, I knew it!" cried Mrs. Barbour, "something's broken, and we'll be kept here all night; and we'll be having such accidents all the way. Nobody ever was so unfortunate as I am."
"Why you more than the rest of us?" asked her sister, dryly. "If one is delayed, we all are."
"It was only a broken linchpin, already replaced by another," announced Kenneth a few moments later; "and now, if you please, ladies, we will go on our way again."
At dusk the party arrived at a lonely log cabin in the woods, where they found shelter for the night.
Fare and accommodations were none of the best—the one consisting of fat pork, hominy, and coarse corn bread, the other of hastily improvised beds, upon the floor of the lower room for the women and children; upon that of the loft overhead for the men.