d them. Aunt Deborah's talent for listening won them also, and they
told her their ambitions quite as eagerly as the Vigilantes had done. All
but Malcolm--he was strangely silent! Dinner was served on the lawn
beneath the cottonwoods. Joe and Dick brought out the large table, which
was soon set by Hannah and her four eager assistants. It was a jolly meal,
quite the merriest person being Aunt Deborah.

"It wouldn't be so bad to grow old if you could be sure of being like
that, would it?" whispered Carver Standish III to Malcolm.

"No," said Malcolm absent-mindedly, looking at Aunt Nan. "No, it
wouldn't!"

"Now, Aunt Deborah," began Virginia, when the things were cleared away,
"you know you promised you'd tell stories. You will, won't you?"

Aunt Deborah's gray eyes swept the circle of interested faces raised to
her own.

"Why, of course I will, Virginia," she said. "Where shall I begin?"

"At the very beginning," suggested Carver and Jack together. "We want it
all, please."

"I'm glad William put marigolds on the table," Aunt Deborah began. "They
make it easy for me to get started. They take me back fifty years ago to
the day before I was married back in Iowa. Robert came up that evening,
and saw me with a brown dress on and marigolds at my waist. 'Wear them
to-morrow, Deborah,' says he. 'They're so bright and sunny and a good
omen. You see, _we're_ going to need sunshine on our wedding journey.' So
the next day, when I was married, I wore some marigolds against my white
dress. Some folks thought 'twas an awful queer thing to do. They said
roses would have been much more _weddingy_, but Robert and I knew--and it
didn't matter about other folks.

"The very next day we started for our new home across the plains. That was
to be our wedding journey. 'Twas in July, 1864. We went to Council Bluffs
to meet the others of our train. That was just a small town then. In about
three days they'd all collected together, ready to start. We didn't have
so large a party as some. There were about seventy-five wagons in all, and
two hundred persons, counting the children.

"I'll never forget how I felt when I saw the last house go out of sight. I
was sitting in the back of our wagon--we were near the end of the train
that day--and Robert was ahead driving the oxen. But I guess he knew how I
was feeling, for he came back and comforted me. There was comfort, too, in
the way other folks besides me were feeling. There wasn't many dry