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 doing.

While we were talking, grandma kept busily at work, and sometimes she wiped her face with the corner of her apron, yet we did not think of her as listening, nor of watching us, nor would we ever have known it, had we not learned it later from her own lips, as she told others the circumstances which had brought us into her life.

Some days later Georgia and I were playing in the back yard when Leanna appeared at the door and called out in quick, jubilant tones:  “Children, run around to the front and see who has come!”

True enough, hitched to a stake near the front door was a bay horse with white spots on his body and a white stripe down his face, and tied to the pommel of his saddle was another horse with a side saddle on its back.  It did not take us long to get into the house where we found Elitha and our new brother, who had come to arrange about taking us away with them.  While Elitha was talking to grandma and Leanna, Georgia stood listening, but I sat on my new brother’s knee and heard all about his beautiful spotted horse and a colt of the same colors.