sez she. The' was some woman in her even
then.

The' wasn't no way to bluff her, so I said serious, "Well, what do you
intend to do about it?"

"I don't know," said she. "Dad has lost so many other things beside his
temper, stumpin' around with that cane, that he thinks he has lost the
key to the chest. He goes around grumblin' an' lookin' for it; but he
don't ask if any one has found it. Why do you suppose that is?"

"It ain't any of my supposin'," sez I. "What are you goin' to do about
it?"

"As soon as I get through with this letter--an' make up my mind not to
hunt through the chest--I'm goin' to slip the key into his pocket--an'
then watch his face when he finds it."

"You oughtn't to treat your own father so, Barbara," sez I.

She laughed. "Barbara! that's a good soundin' name on your tongue,
Happy," sez she. Then she sobered. "I don't care nothing for what you
say or what he says; the' 's things I'm goin' to find out; an' I have a
right to. I never told him why it was that I whopped those two girls
over at school last winter, an' I never told even you. I whopped 'em
'cause they said I never had a mother. Everything has to have a mother,
even a snake, an' I had one too. Why don't he tell me about her? Why
does he allus turn me off when I ask about her? I don't intend to just
let him tell me that she was the most beautiful woman in the world an'
too good to stay here, an' such things. I am going to find out who she
was, an' if you wasn't a coward you'd help me. Now."

It was true what she said, an' I might have known she was studyin'
about it. I might, if I'd had the sense of a hoss, have known that this
was what made her old-like--studyin' about things she never ought to
have been forced to study about.

"Does that letter tell about her, Barbie?" I asked.

"That's what I want to know; but you ain't got the sand to read it, an'
I can't make it out. Here, read it."

I took it an' read it. The writin' was fine an' like what was in
Barbie's writin' book along the top. It sounded like as if a young girl
had written it partly against her will, although it was purty lovesome
too. It told about how lonely she was, an' that she hadn't never been
able to tell whether it was Jack or him she was most in love with until
Jack had asked her, an' then after Jack had deceived her an' he had
been so kind, she found out 'at he was the one she had loved the most
all the time. She reminded him 'at she had written to him be