It was surprising how soon a comfortable, homelike air was given to the old dilapidated rooms, by a few Indian mats spread upon the floor, the piano and other furniture ranged in their appropriate places, and even a few pictures hung against the logs.  The latter, alas! had soon to be displaced, for with the first heavy shower the rain found entrance through sundry crevices, and we saw ourselves obliged to put aside, carefully, everything that could be injured by the moisture.  We made light of these evils, however—­packed away our carpets and superfluous furniture upon the boards above, which we dignified with the name of attic, and contentedly resolved to await the time when Government should condescend to remember us.  The greatest inconvenience I experienced, was from the necessity of wearing my straw bonnet throughout the day, as I journeyed from bedroom to parlor, and from parlor to kitchen.  I became so accustomed to it that I even sometimes forgot to remove it when I sat down to table, or to my quiet occupations with my mother and sister.

Permission was, however, in time, received to build a house for the blacksmith—­that is, the person kept in pay by the Government at this station to mend the guns, traps, etc. of the Indians.

It happened most fortunately for us that Monsieur Isidore Morrin was a bachelor, and quite satisfied to continue boarding with his friend Louis Frum, dit Manaigre, so that when the new house was fairly commenced we planned it and hurried it forward entirely on our own account.

It was not very magnificent, it is true, consisting of but a parlor and two bedrooms on the ground-floor, and two low chambers under the roof, with a kitchen in the rear; but compared with the rambling old stable-like building we now inhabited, it seemed quite a palace.

Before it was completed, Mr. Kinzie was notified that the money for the annual Indian payment was awaiting his arrival in Detroit to take it in charge and superintend its transportation to the Portage; and he was obliged to set off at once to fulfil this part of his duty.

The workmen who had been brought from the Mississippi to erect the main building, were fully competent to carry on their work without an overseer; but the kitchen was to be the task of the Frenchmen, and the question was, how could it be executed in the absence of the bourgeois?

“You will have to content yourselves in the old quarters until my return,” said my husband, “and then we will soon have things in order.”  His journey was to be a long and tedious one, for the operations of Government were not carried on by railroad and telegraph in those days.

After his departure I said to the men, “Come, you have all your logs cut and hauled—­the squaws have brought the bark for the roof—­what is to prevent our finishing the house and getting all moved and settled to surprise Monsieur John on his return?”