Next morning, as the quartette were at breakfast, Mr. Kennedy, senior, took occasion to propound to his son the plans he had laid down for them during the next week.
“In the first place, Charley, my boy,” said he, as well as a large mouthful of buffalo steak and potato would permit, “you must drive up to the fort and report yourself. Harry and I will go with you; and after we have paid our respects to old Grant (another cup of tea, Kate, my darling)—you recollect him, Charley, don’t you?”
“Yes, perfectly.”
“Well, then, after we’ve been to see him, we’ll drive down the river, and call on our friends at the mill. Then we’ll look in on the Thomsons; and give a call, in passing, on old Neverin—he’s always out, so he’ll be pleased to hear we were there, and it won’t detain us. Then—-”
“But, dear father—excuse my interrupting you—Harry and I are very anxious to spend our first day at home entirely with you and Kate. Don’t you think it would be more pleasant? and then, to-morrow—”
“Now, Charley, this is too bad of you,” said Mr. Kennedy, with a look of affected indignation: “no sooner have you come back than you’re at your old tricks, opposing and thwarting your father’s wishes.”
“Indeed, I do not wish to do so, father,” replied Charley, with a smile; “but I thought that you would like my plan better yourself, and that it would afford us an opportunity of having a good long, satisfactory talk about all that concerns us, past, present, and future.”
“What a daring mind you have, Charley,” said Harry, “to speak of cramming a satisfactory talk of the past, the present, and the future all into one day!”
“Harry will take another cup of tea, Kate,” said Charley, with an arch smile, as he went on,—
“Besides, father, Jacques tells me that he means to go off immediately, to visit a number of his old voyageur friends in the settlement, and I cannot part with him till we have had one more canter together over the prairies. I want to show him to Kate, for he’s a great original.”