“Negosha,” he said, “is the place for a young man.  You can be a baron out there with ten thousan’ head of rattle.  But the place for me is Texas.  Trees is in constant varder!”

“But,” said Ma Fewkes, repeating her speech of three years ago, “it’s so fur, Fewkes!”

“Fur!” he scornfully shouted, just as he had before.  “Fur!” this time letting his voice fall in contempt for the distance, for any one that spoke of the distance, and for things in general in Iowa.  “Why, Lord-heavens, womern, it hain’t more’n fifteen hundred mile!”

“Fewkes,” she retorted, drawing her shoulders back almost as far as she had had them forward a moment before, “I’ve been drailed around the country, fifteen hundred miles here, and fifteen hundred miles there, with old Tom takin’ mad fits every little whip-stitch, about as much as I’m a-going to!”

“I don’t,” said Rowena, “see why you’ve got so sot on goin’ into your hole here, an’ pullin’ the hole in after you.  You hook up ol’ Tom, pa, an’ me an’ you’ll go to Texas.  I’ll start to-morrow morning, pa!”

“I never seen sich a girl,” said her mother; “to talk of movin’ when prospects is as good f’r you as they be now!”

“Wal, le’s stop jourin’ at each other,” said Rowena, hastily, as if to change the subject.  “It ain’t the way to treat company.”

I discovered that Rowena was about to change her situation in the Blue-grass Manor establishment.  She was going into “the Big House” to work under Mrs. Mobley, the wife of the superintendent, or as we called him, the overseer.

“Well, that’ll be nice,” said I.

“I don’t want to,” she said.  “I like to wait on table better.”

“Then why do you change?” said I.

“Mr. Gowdy—­,” began Ma Fewkes, but was interrupted by her daughter, who talked on until her mother was switched off from her explanation.

“I wun’t work with niggers!” said Rowena.  “That Pinck has brought a yellow girl here from Dubuque, and she’s goin’ to wait on the table as she did in Dubuque.  They claim they was married the last time he was back there, an’ he brought her here.  I wun’t work with her.  I wun’t demean myself into a black slave—.  But tell me, Jake,” coming over and sitting by me, “how you’re gittin’ along.  Off here we don’t hear no news from folks over to the Centre at all.  We go to the new railroad, an’ never see any one from over there—.”

“Exceptin’ Magnus,” said Ma Fewkes.

“You ain’t married, yet, be you?” Rowena asked.

“I should say not!  Me married!”

We sat then for quite a while without saying anything.  Rowena sat smoothing out a calico apron she had on.  Finally she said:  “Am I wearin’ anything you ever seen before, Jake?”

Looking her over carefully I saw nothing I could remember.  I told her so at last, and said she was dressed awful nice now and looked lots better than I had ever seen her looking.  My own rags were sorely on my mind just then.