issed
away my fears and rode off on old Lisa. I did not know that she would
ride farther than the fort and imagined she had gone on horseback so
that she might the easier bring back my little sister.

Leanna washed the dishes and did the other work before she joined me in
watching for grandma's return. At last she came in sight and I ran up
the road craning my neck to see if Georgia were really behind on old
Lisa's back, and when I saw her pinched face aglow with smiles that
were all for me, I had but one wish, and that was to get my arms around
her.

One chair was large enough to hold us both when we got into the house,
and the big clock on the wall with long weights reaching almost to the
floor and red roses painted around its white face, did not tick long
before we were deaf to its sound, telling each other about the doings
of the day.

She knew more than I, who listened intently as she excitedly went on:

"Me and Frances started to find you this morning, but we wasn't far
when we met Jacob in the wagon, and he stopped and asked us where we
was going. We told him. Then he told us to get in by him. But he didn't
come this way, just drove down to the river and some men lifted us out
and set us in a boat and commenced to paddle across the water. I knew
that wasn't the way, and I cried and cried as loud as I could cry, and
told them I wanted to go to my little sister Eliza, and that I'd tip
the boat over if they did not take me back; and one man said, 'It's too
bad! It ain't right to part the two littlest ones.' And they told me if
I'd sit still and stop crying they would bring me back with them by
and by, and that I should come to you. And I minded.

"Then they taked us to that house where we sleeped under the carpet the
night we didn't get to the Fort. Don't you remember? Well, lots of
people was there and talked about us and about father and mother, and
waited for grandma to come. Pretty soon grandma come, and everybody
talked, and talked. And grandma told them she was sorry for us, and
would take you and me if she could keep Leanna to help her do the work.
When I was coming away with grandma, Frances cried like everything. She
said she wanted to see you, and told the people mother said we should
always stay together. But they wouldn't let her come. They've gived her
to somebody else, and now she is their little girl."

We both felt sorry for Frances, and wished we could know where she was
and what she was doin