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THE NETX DAY WAS Sunday. For some weeks, all of our party had been planning to meet at the Smithsons’ cabin for a service and then, should the weather be favorable, an outdoor supper. Mrs. Bush and Mrs. Jenkins and Susannah had planned to come out from town, and there was some hope among the women that Mrs. Lacey and her three children would have arrived by that time. Otherwise, we all acknowledged, she might as well stay in the east. But when, as we were standing there watching Mr. Bisket’s wagon approach us from the south, bumping and humping over the prairie grasses and throwing its passengers into all sorts of wild postures, we saw a strange figure, it was no grown woman with three children. It was rather a very slight man or a boy, alternately leaning over the side so far he was nearly falling out and jumping around like a monkey. From a distance, also, someone could clearly be heard to whoop, probably this small figure, since Mrs. Jenkins and Mrs. Bush were notable for their staid dignity in almost all circumstances. As they came closer, I could make out something like a seegar protruding from the lower parts of the new visitor’s face, but that didn’t render me any the less astonished when I beheld my nephew Frank leap from the wagon and run toward me a few moments later.

"An’t ya surprised to see me, Lidie? An’t ya?" Frank was grinning but otherwise suddenly very cool, and instead of throwing his arms around me or allowing me to do the same to him, he stopped suddenly and stuck out his hand, and shook first mine and then Thomas’s, and said, "I told Ma you’d about fall down when you saw me, but she thought you’d get her letter before that. But you didn’t. Here it is. She should have known not to send me to mail it to you, because I just kept it in my pocket."

He presented me with the letter, folded over and neatly sealed, balanced on the palm of his hand. While I read it, Thomas took him off to meet our new friends. I even astounded myself with the fullness of my pleasure in seeing Frank again. I’d steamed away from my family in something of a cold fever to leave all that behind and try something new, and with the novelty of marriage and new scenes, I hadn’t knowingly missed anyone, but I might as well have been pining for Frank day after day, because that was how glad I was to see his sassy face and his jaunty demeanor.

"Dear Lydia," read the letter, only a note, really,

Frank pesters me day and night until I think I am going to scream. All he can talk about is you and going to Kansas. Roland and Horace see no harm in it, though, to tell you the honest truth, I am sure they see no harm in it because they would just as soon be doing it themselves! Roland thinks if the boy is well armed he should have no trouble on the way! I ask you! But I throw up my hands, as a mother’s tears are of no avail with any of the three of them. I am sending you this letter to inform you that my Frank will be leaving here on the Mary Ida on October one and should come to you a week after that, as the agent of the steamship has assured us that every effort will be made to oversee his passage every mile of the way. If he should not arrive by October ninth at the outside, then you must—oh, my dear, I can’t go on with that. I just can’t bear to think about it. Mr. Newton and his friends will know what to do should the worst happen, may God preserve my boy. Mr. Brereton maintains that the boy can take care of himself and that it’s high time that he put his energies to something useful, and he has no interest in his schooling.

I close with my heart in my mouth.

Your loving sister,

HARRIET

It was now October 16, a week past the outer date of Frank’s passage, and though it gave me something of a turn to think of what he had been doing in the previous two weeks, well, here he was, safe, sound, and full of life, and I was sure that he would fill me in on his adventures soon enough.

We had our Sunday service, preached by Mr. Smithson,