Yet she did not seem to wear one too many. She looked so
winsome and picturesque that I have never forgotten the laughing,
pretty picture.
We started back over ground where my little sisters and I had wandered
the previous Spring. The people whom I remembered had since gone to
other settlements, and strangers lived in the old huts. I could not
help looking in as we passed, for I still felt that mother might not be
dead. She might have come down the mountain alone and perhaps I could
find her. The boys, not knowing why I lagged behind, tried to hurry me
along; and finally left me to go home by myself. This, not from
unkindness, but rather love of teasing, and also oblivion of the vain
hope I cherished.
Mrs. Lennox let me dry the dishes for her after the noon meal, then
sent me to visit the neighbor in the next house, while she should stow
her things in the wagon and get ready for the journey. I loved this
lady[15] in the next house as soon as she spoke to me, and I was
delighted with her baby, who reached out his little arms to have me
take him, and raised his head for me to kiss his lips. While he slept,
his mother sewed and talked with me. She had known my parents on the
plains, and now let me sit at her feet, giving me her workbox, that I
might look at its bobbins of different-colored thread and the pretty
needle-book. When I told her that the things looked a little like
mother's and that sometimes mother let me take the tiniest bit of her
wax, she gave me permission to take a tiny taste of that which I held
in my hand to see if it was like that which I remembered.
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