"Papa'll be sure to find us to-day," said Kitty, after they had crawled out of their nest. "We must have all the emigrant fun we can, for we'll only be Ted and Kitty after we get home."
"What do em'grants have for their breakfast, I wonder?" asked Ted.
"Oh, they—look around for things. Sometimes they have just butternuts, I guess," answered Kitty, while she slipped on her shoes.
"Well, then, let's have but'nuts—and lots of them," said hungry Ted.
So Kitty, who was a nice tidy girl about everything, looked around until she found a clean flat rock for a table; and while they were gathering their breakfast from the nearest butternut-trees, they came across a tiny little spring that bubbled out from under a ledge, and slipped away in a small stream down the mountain-side.
"Oh, isn't it cute?" said Kitty. "We'll build our cabin right here, and we'll play this is our water-power, and build a mill too. I'll be Mr. Brown, and you may be the Co.—Brown & Co., you know."
After a good drink of the clear, cold water from a cup made of a basswood leaf, they washed faces and hands, and went to the flat rock for breakfast. The butternuts were not quite ripe; they stained fingers, and they were hard to crack—with just a stone for a hammer—but there were "lots of them," as Ted had requested.
All the long bright forenoon they worked about their water-power, putting up an extensive mill of stones and sticks, and having no trouble at all, except when Ted got tired of being called "Co.," and insisted on being Mr. Brown a part of the time at least, in spite of Kitty's argument that the youngest ought always to be Co.
So, about one o'clock, when their father and uncle were galloping here and there in search of them, they were sitting at their rock table cracking more nuts, and listening proudly to the mimic roar of the water going over the dam they had just completed.
Sometimes they heard faint echoes and queer hootings off in the distance. "We'll play it's Indians, and we're hiding from them," said Kitty, never dreaming that all the men in the neighborhood of her home were hunting and hallooing through the forest for two very lost children. Once, when the shouts came quite near, the echoes mixed up things, so that Kitty was almost frightened, and drew her brother into the shelter of some thick bushes. "It sounds like a crazy man," she said.