Page:From the West to the West.djvu/66

 we shall

be glad to escape when we again see morning. Weather and roads no better.

"April 8. Mother quite ill again; but the skies are clear, and she insists on moving forward.

"April II. No food for man or beast to be had for love or money. We must move onward, sick or well.

"April 12. A better-settled region. The scenery is often fine. Pussy-willows peep at us from marshy edges, and birds are singing in the budding treetops. Sick folks no better. Bought a liberal supply of corn for the stock, and a lot of butter, eggs, and chickens for the rest of us, so we have a feast in prospect. Camped on the edge of a pretty little village, on a nice green grass-plat. Daddie took us girls to a prayer-meeting. The good people eyed us askance. Evidently they thought us freaks. Certainly our slat sunbonnets and soiled linsey-woolsey dresses were not reassuring."

The next day, at nightfall, the party reached Quincy, on the Mississippi, and camped on a flat bit of upland outside of the city's limits, where many other wayfarers, like themselves, had halted and encamped.

"Did you notice Scotty?" asked Marjorie, approaching Jean, who sat on a wagon-tongue, trying to think of something out of the ordinary to jot in her journal.

"What's he up to now?"

"He's been preening his feathers like a turkey-gobbler for the last half-hour. Guess our pretty widow and her aristocratic mamma have caught up with our train. Just watch him! See how the ex-scientist, ex-statesman, exorator, and now ex-almost-anything is making a fool of himself!"

"All people, of both sexes, get a spell of the simples, sooner or later," laughed Jean. "Daddie says that when the system is in the right condition to catch it, one gets it bad."

"Guess I'll ride out and look over the town a little.