Page:Betty Gordon in the Land of Oil.djvu/82

72 somebody give me a lift. Working all by yourself is tedious-like, and Emma don't get a minute to set down. My brother used to make lots of mats to sell; he could braid 'em tighter than I can.

She showed Betty how to braid and then started Bob on three strips. Then she took up the sewing of strips already braided.

"We were talking to the Indian this morning," said Betty idly. "He told us a lot about Indians—how wherever they have been oil has been discovered. Does he really know?"

"Ki has been to Government school, and knows a heap," nodded Grandma Watterby. "What he tells you's likely to be so. I don't rightly know myself about what they have to do with the oil, but Will was saying only the other night that the Osage Indians have been paid millions of dollars within the last few years."

Her keen old eyes were sparkling, and she was sewing with the quick, darting motion that they soon learned was characteristic of everything she did. She must be very old, Bob decided, watching her shriveled hands, knotted by rheumatism, and the idea of age put another thought into his head.

"Mr. Gordon said you'd lived on this farm for sixty years, Grandma," the boy said suddenly. It had been explained to them that the old lady