“Well, I don’t know yet.  I never tried keeping house in a log-cabin.  You’ll have to show me how, I expect,” said Kitty rather loftily.

“Lor!  I guess you know as much as I do about it.  I never see a log-cabin in my life till we come out here.  My father had a fust-rate house, cla’borded and shingled, and all, down in Maine; and we alluz had a plenty to do with of every sort:  so I hain’t no experience at all in this sort of way.”

“But you have a way of getting on without it that is almost as good.  I don’t know what I should have done without Mehitable, Kitty; and I dare say she will help you very much by telling all the ingenious ways she has contrived to make our rude accommodations answer.  You know, as we are all beginning together, each must help on the other; and we must all keep up our courage, and try to be contented.”

“Well, I must say I never see one that kep’ up her own courage, and everybody else’s, like her, since I was born into the world,” said Mehitable, turning confidentially to Kitty.  “Talk of my helping her!  Lor! if it hadn’t been for her, I never would have stopped here over night, in the world.  Why, the first night, I didn’t do nothing but roar the whole night long.  Mr. Ross he said I’d raise the river if I didn’t stop:  but in the morning down come Miss Dora, looking so bright and sunshiny, that I couldn’t somehow open my head to say I wouldn’t stop; and then she begun to talk”—­

“Mehitable, the short-cake is done.  Will you speak to Mr. Windsor?” called Dora from within; and Kitty entered, saying,—­

“How nice the tea-table looks!-just like home, Dora; the old India china and all.”

“It is home, Kit-cat.  Here is Karl, and here is little Sunshine.  Come, friends, and let us sit down to our first meal in the new house,” said Dora:  and Kitty, subduing a little feeling of fallen dignity, seated herself at the side of the table; leaving the head for Dora, who colored a little, but took it quietly.

CHAPTER XXIX.

Life at outpost.

And now began for each member of the family at Outpost a new and active life.

Kitty, who, young as she was, had already achieved reputation as a notable housekeeper, found quite enough to attend to in domestic matters, and, with Mehitable’s help and counsel, soon had all the interests and nearly all the comforts of New-England farm-life established in her Western home.  Even the marigolds her mother had always raised as a flavoring to broths; and the catnip, motherwort, peppermint, and tansy, grown and dried as sovereign remedies in case of illness; and the parsley, sage, and marjoram, to be used in various branches of cookery,—­flourished in their garden-bed under Kitty’s fostering care; while poor Silas Ross was fairly worried, in spite of himself, into digging and roofing an ice-cellar in the intervals of his more important duties.