“Oh, I intended to ride out till I met you,” replied his father. “But I'd have missed you on the plain road; and gone by to the next town to stop for you, if it hadn't been for the washing. You better go to sleep again now. Have you had a nice trip?”
“Oh, awful nice! There was a little girl lost, and we got her to her mother again, and Zene and the wagon were separated from us once”—
“Zene has taken good care of you, has he?”
“He didn't have to take care of us!” remonstrated Robert. “And last night when there was a fair, I thought he stuck around more than he was needed: There was the meanest boy that stuck up his hose at movers' children.”
Aunt Corinne's brother Tip laughed under his breath.
“You'll not be movers' children much longer. The home is over yonder, only half a day's ride or so.”
“Is it a nice place?”
“I think it's a nice place. There's prairie, but there's timber too. And there's money to be made. You go to sleep now. You'll wake your grandma, and I expect she's tired.”
“Yes, sir, I'm going. Is there a garden?”
“There's a good bit of ground for a garden; and there's a planting of young catalpas. Far as the eye can see in one direction, it's prairie. On the other side is woods. The house is better than the old one. I had to build, and I built pretty substantial. Your grandma's growing old. She'll need comforts in her old age, and we must put them around her, my man.”