The barkeeper said he had forgotten all about the pack of cards that he had trusted Sandy with, when the lad gave him the seventy-five cents due him. “I can’t always keep account of these little things,” he explained.
“But you don’t often trust anybody with cards coming down the river, do you?” asked Sandy, surprised.
“Heaps,” said the barkeeper.
“And do they always pay?”
“Some of ’em does, and then ag’in, some of ’em doesn’t,” replied the man, as with a yawn he turned away to rearrange his bottles and glasses.
With the aid of a lounger on the landing, whom they thought they could now afford to fee for a quarter, the youngsters soon transferred their luggage from the “New Lucy” to the little ferry-boat near at hand. To their great pleasure, they found 251 on board the pleasant-faced lady from Baltimore and her party. She was apparently quite as pleased to meet them, and she expressed her regret that they were not going eastward on the train with herself and sons. “We have had such a pleasant trip down the river together,” she said. “And you are going back to Illinois? Will you return to Kansas in the spring?”
“We cannot tell yet,” replied Charlie, modestly. “That all depends upon how things look in the spring, and what father and Uncle Aleck think about it. We are free-State people, and we want to see the Territory free, you see.”
The pleasant-faced lady’s forehead was just a little clouded when she said, “You will have your labor lost, if you go to Kansas, then; for it will certainly be a slave State.”
They soon were in the cars with their tickets for Dixon bought, and, as Sandy exultingly declared, paid for, and their baggage checked all the way through. Then Sandy said, “I’m sorry that pretty lady from Baltimore is a Border Ruffian.”
The other two boys shouted with laughter, and Oscar cried: “She’s no Border Ruffian. She’s only pro-slavery; and so is Uncle Oscar and lots of others. You ought to be ashamed of yourself to be so––what is it, Charlie? Intolerant, that’s what it is.”