with so many moving in and such a lot of oil
folks, why, there's days when I don't see a rig pass the house I
know."

Betty and Bob spoke simultaneously.

"Do you know any one named Saunders?" they chorused.

CHAPTER X

BOB LEARNS SOMETHING

Grandma Watterby considered gravely.

"Saunders? Saunders?" she repeated reflectively, while Betty squeezed
Bob's arm in an agony of hopeful excitement. "Seems to me--now wait a
minute, and don't hurry me. When you hurry me, I get mixed in my
mind."

Betty and Bob waited in respectful silence. The old woman rubbed her
forehead fretfully, but gradually her expression cleared.

"There was a Saunders family," she murmured, half to herself. "Three
girls, wasn't there--or was it four? No, three, and only one of 'em
married. What was her name--Faith? Yes, that's it, Faith. A pretty
girl she was, with eyes as blue as a lake and ripply hair she wore in
a big knot. I always did want to see that hair down her back, and one
day I told her so.

"'How long is it, Faith?' I asked her. 'When I was a girl we wore our
hair down our backs in a braid and was thankful to our Creator for
the blessing of a heavy head of hair.'

"Faith laughed and laughed. I can see her now; she had a funny way
of crinkling up her eyes when she laughed.

"'I'll take it down for you, Mrs. Watterby,' she says; and, my land,
if she didn't pull out every pin and let her hair tumble down her
back. It was a foot below her waist, too. I never saw such a head o'
hair."

Bob looked up at the old woman with shining eyes.

"That was my mother," he said quietly.

"Your mother!" Grandma Watterby's tone was startled. Then her face
broke into a wrinkled smile.

"Well, now, ain't I stupid?" she demanded eagerly. "My head isn't
what it used to be. Course you are Faith Saunders' son. She married
David Henderson, a likely young carpenter. Dear, dear, to think
you're Faith's boy. My, wouldn't your grandma have been proud to see
you!"

"Did you know her?" asked Bob hungrily. Deprived of kin for so many
years, even the claim to relatives, he was pathetically starved for
the details taken for granted by the average boy.

"Your grandpa and your grandma," pronounced Grandma Watterby, "died
'bout a year after your ma was married. I guess they never saw you.
Your aunties was all of twenty years older than she was. Your ma was
the youngest of a large family of children, but they all died babies
'cept the two oldest