“Yes,” Mark said with a drop in his voice. “A June frost. That happens sometimes. It’s a chance we’ll have to take. I’m going to Anchorage for those plants tomorrow.
“You know,” his voice dropped, “I can’t see all this going in debt for the things you eat and wear, to say nothing of tools, machinery, and all that. It’s got to be paid sometime and it’s going to come hard.
“It’s all right if you have to do it, better than getting no start at all. I’m not criticising anyone else. But, as for the Hughes family, we’re going to pay as we go if we can, and who knows but those tomatoes will pay for our winter’s supply of flour, sugar, and all the rest?”
“Who knows?” Florence echoed enthusiastically.
Six weeks had passed when once again Florence sat beside the lake. There was a moon tonight. It hung like a magic lantern above the snow-capped mountain. The lake reflected both mountains and moon so perfectly that for one who looked too long, it became not a lake at all, but mountains and moon.
Florence had looked too long. She was dreaming of wandering among those jagged peaks in an exciting search. A search for gold. And why not? Had not the aged prospector appeared once more at their door? Had she not feasted him on hot-cakes and wild honey? Had he not repaid her with fresh tales of her grandfather’s doings in the very far north?
“I shall go in search of him,” she told herself now. “A search for a grandfather,” she laughed. Well, why not? He had lost a rich gold mine. She was strong as a man, was Florence. No man, she was sure, could follow a dog team farther nor faster than she. She would find Tom Kennedy and together they would find that mine.
“But first this!” she sighed as on other occasions, flinging her arms wide to take in the claim, the lake, and the cabin.
“First what?” a voice close at hand said.
Startled, she sprang to her feet. “Oh! It’s you, Mark.” She made a place for him beside her on a broad flat rock.