Page:The New Penelope.djvu/20

14 California if he would wait until the baby was a year old before starting; and to this he agreed."

"How old were you at that time?"

"Only about nineteen. I was twenty the spring we started; and celebrated my anniversary by making a general gathering of all my relatives and friends at our house, before we broke up and sold off our house-keeping goods—all but such as could be carried in our wagons across the plains."

"You were not starting by yourselves?"

"O no. There was a large company gathering together on the Missouri river, to make the start in May; and we, with some of our neighbors, made ready to join them. I shall never forget my feelings as I stood in my own house for the last time, taking a life-long leave of every familiar object! But you do not want to hear about that."

"I want to hear what you choose to tell me; but most of all about your second marriage, and what led to it."

"It is not easy to go back so many years and take up one thread in the skein of life, and follow that alone. I will disentangle it as rapidly as I can; but first let us have a fresh fire."

Suiting the action to the word, my hostess touched a bell and ordered a good supply of wood, which I took as an intimation that we were to have one of our late sittings. In confirmation of this suspicion a second order was given to have certain refreshments, including hot lemonade, made ready to await our pleasure. When we were once more alone I begged her to go on with her story.

"We left the rendezvous in May, and traveled without any unusual incidents all through the summer."

"I beg pardon for interrupting you; but I do want to know how you endured that sort of life. Was it not terrible?"

"It was monotonous, it was disagreeable, but it was not terrible while everybody was well. There were compensa-