“That was a better dinner,” said the elder, “than we’d have had at Mr. Smith’s.”

“But Jacob, here,” said grandma, “is not a deacon of the church.”

“That doesn’t lessen my enjoyment of the dinner,” said the elder.

“No,” said Grandma Thorndyke dryly, “I suppose not.  But now let us talk seriously.  This child”—­taking Virginia’s hand—­“is the girl they were searching for back there along the road.”

“Ah,” said the elder.

“She had perfectly good reasons for running away,” went on Grandma Thorndyke, “and she is not going back to that man.  He has no claim upon her.  He is not her guardian.  He is only the man who married her sister—­and as I firmly believe, killed her!”

“I wouldn’t say that,” said the elder.

“Now I calculate,” said Grandma Thorndyke, “and unless I am corrected I shall so report—­and I dare any one to correct me!—­that this child”—­squeezing Virginia’s hand—­“had taken refuge at some dwelling along the road, and that this morning—­not later than this morning—­as Jacob drove along into Waterloo he overtook Virginia walking into town where she was going to seek a position of some kind.  So that you two children were together not longer than from seven this morning until just before church.  You ought not to travel on the Sabbath!”

“No, ma’am,” said I; for she was attacking me.

“Now we are poor,” went on Grandma Thorndyke, “but we never have starved a winter yet; and we want a child like you to comfort us, and to help us—­and we mustn’t leave you as you are any longer.  You must ride on with Mr. Thorndyke and me.”

This to Virginia—­who stretched out her hands to me, and then buried her face in them in Grandma Thorndyke’s lap.  She was crying so that she did not hear me when I asked: 

“Why can’t we go on as we are?  I’ve got a farm.  I’ll take care of her!”

“Children!” snorted grandma.  “Babes in the wood!”

I think she told the elder in some way without words to take me off to one side and talk to me; for he hummed and hawed, and asked me if I wouldn’t show him my horses.  I told him that I was driving cows, and went with him to see them.  I now had six again, besides those I had left with Mr. Westervelt back along the road toward Dubuque; and it took me quite a while to explain to him how I had traded and traded along the road, first my two horses for my first cows, and then always giving one sound cow for two lame ones, until I had great riches for those days in cattle.

He thought this wonderful, and said that I was a second Job; and had every faculty for acquiring riches.  I had actually made property while moving, an operation that was so expensive that it bankrupted many people.  It was astonishing, he insisted; and began looking upon me with more respect—­making property being the thing in which he was weakest, except for laying up treasures in Heaven.  He was surprised, too, to learn that cows could be made draught animals.  He had always thought of them as good for nothing but giving milk.  In fact I found myself so much wiser than he was in the things we had been discussing that when he began to talk to me about Virginia and the impossibility of our going together as we had been doing, it marked quite a change in our relationship—­he having been the scholar and I the teacher.