GRANDMOTHER:  Land sakes, you didn’t do it.  It was the government.  And what a government does is nothing for a person to be ashamed of.

SILAS:  I don’t know about that.  Why is he here?  Why is Felix Fejevary not rich and grand in Hungary to-day?  ’Cause he was ashamed of what his government was.

GRANDMOTHER:  Well, that was a foreign government.

SILAS:  A seeing how ’tis for the other person—­a bein’ that other person, kind of honesty.  Joke of it, ’twould do something for you.  ’Twould ‘a’ done something for us to have been Indians a little more.  My father used to talk about Blackhawk—­they was friends.  I saw Blackhawk once—­when I was a boy. (to FEJEVARY) Guess I told you.  You know what he looked like?  He looked like the great of the earth.  Noble.  Noble like the forests—­and the Mississippi—­and the stars.  His face was long and thin and you could see the bones, and the bones were beautiful.  Looked like something that’s never been caught.  He was something many nights in his canoe had made him.  Sometimes I feel that the land itself has got a mind that the land would rather have had the Indians.

GRANDMOTHER:  Well, don’t let folks hear you say it.  They’d think you was plum crazy.

SILAS:  I s’pose they would, (turning to FEJEVARY) But after you’ve walked a long time over the earth—­and you all alone, didn’t you ever feel something coming up from it that’s like thought?

FEJEVARY:  I’m afraid I never did.  But—­I wish I had.

SILAS:  I love land—­this land.  I suppose that’s why I never have the feeling that I own it.

GRANDMOTHER:  If you don’t own it—­I want to know!  What do you think we come here for—­your father and me?  What do you think we left our folks for—­left the world of white folks—­schools and stores and doctors, and set out in a covered wagon for we didn’t know what?  We lost a horse.  Lost our way—­weeks longer than we thought ’twould be.  You were born in that covered wagon.  You know that.  But what you don’t know is what that’s like—­without your own roof—­or fire—­without—­

(She turns her face away.)

SILAS:  No.  No, mother, of course not.  Now—­now isn’t this too bad?  I don’t say things right.  It’s because I never went to school.

GRANDMOTHER:  (her face shielded) You went to school two winters.

SILAS:  Yes.  Yes, mother.  So I did.  And I’m glad I did.

GRANDMOTHER:  (with the determination of one who will not have her own pain looked at) Mrs Fejevary’s pansy bed doing well this summer?

FEJEVARY:  It’s beautiful this summer.  She was so pleased with the new purple kind you gave her.  I do wish you could get over to see them.

GRANDMOTHER:  Yes.  Well, I’ve seen lots of pansies.  Suppose it was pretty fine-sounding speeches they had in town?

FEJEVARY:  Too fine-sounding to seem much like the war.