"Guess again!" returned a dignified senior. "Her father is one of the students. Haven't you noticed that fine-looking Willard? The mother, too, knows how to appreciate a college, I understand—used to be a teacher back in New York where they came from."
"You don't mean to say that this happy little goldfinch is the child of two such solemn owls!" exclaimed the other.
"Nothing of the sort. They are very wide-awake, alive sort of people, I assure you,—the kind who'd make a success of anything. The father wants to be a preacher, they say—wait, there he comes now!"
It was plain to be seen that Mr. Willard was an alert, capable man and a good father. The little girl ran to him with a joyful cry, and a sturdy lad who had been trying to climb a tree bounded forward at the same time.
"I trust that my small fry haven't been making trouble," said the man, giving his free hand to Frances and graciously allowing Oliver to carry two of his armful of books.
"Only making friends," the senior responded genially, "and one can see that they can't very well help that."
The Oberlin years were a happy, friendly time for all the family. While both father and mother were working hard to make the most of their long-delayed opportunity for a liberal education, they delighted above all in the companionship of neighbors with tastes like their own. After five years, however, it became clear that the future was not to be after their planning. Mr. Willard's health failed, and a wise doctor said that he must leave his book-world, and take up a free, active life in the open. So the little family joined the army of westward-moving pioneers.
Can you picture the three prairie-schooners that carried them and all their goods to the new home? The father drove the first, Oliver geehawed proudly from the high perch of the next, and mother sat in the third, with Frances and little sister Mary on a cushioned throne made out of father's topsyturvy desk. For nearly thirty days the little caravan made its way—now through forests, now across great sweeping prairies, now over bumping corduroy roads that crossed stretches of swampy ground. They cooked their bacon and potatoes, gypsy-fashion, on the ground, and slept under the white hoods of their long wagons, when they were not kept awake by the howling of wolves.
When Sunday came, they rested wherever the day found them—sometimes on the rolling prairie, where their only shelter from rain and sun was the homely schooner, but where at night they could look up at the great tent of the starry heavens; sometimes in the cathedral of the forest, where they found Jack-in-the-pulpit preaching to the other wild-flowers and birds and breezes singing an anthem of praise.
