in' an' just began to look sorry. That was
hardest of all.

"Happy," she sez to me one night when we was ridin' back from Look Out,
"don't you think I'm old enough now to ask Dad about what that letter
meant?"

I turned an' looked at her; the sun was just about to duck behind the
ridge, an' her face was in all its brightness. It was a lot different
face from that of the child who had asked the question so long ago. It
was serious with its question, an' it looked like the face of a woman.
This was the first time she had mentioned the subject since I'd been
back, an' I hadn't thought she dwelt on it any more; but I saw now that
it lay close up to her heart, an' was the one thing she never could
ride away from. "I'm purt' nigh fifteen," she went on. "Fifteen is a
goodly age," I sez, but not sarcastic. I was thinkin' of Jabez an'
myself that mornin', an' wonderin' if age cut so much figger after all.
"Do you an' your dad ever talk about your mother any more?" I asked her.

"Not much," she said. "When one wants to know all, and one don't want
to tell any, the' ain't much satisfaction in talkin' about--about even
your own mother. Don't you still miss your mother?"

"Well, I wouldn't like to tell everybody," sez I, "but I sure do. Why,
if the' was any way on earth that I could go back to her, I'd sure
go--this very minute."

"At least you know about her. If I just knew about my mother it might
be all right. You can't seem to get close to even a mother when you
don't know a single thing about her. If you know people well, you can
tell what they'd do under any kind of conditions, an' if you know what
they have done, an' what they've been through, you know purty well what
they are; but when you don't know anything at all, it makes it hard,
awful hard."

I didn't have anything to say to her that would help, so I didn't say
anything; an' after we had ridden on a while she said, "Happy, I don't
want you to be a business man. The Easterners that rile me up worse
than any other kind are the business men. They allus calculate how a
thing could be turned into money. Why, if one of 'em lived out here
he'd put a cash value on of Mount Savage. They allus make me think o'
Dombey."

"What was th' about that buckskin mustang to make you think of a
business man?" sez I, thinkin' she meant a little ridin' pony she used
to have.

"I don't mean Dobbins," sez she, "I mean a character out of a book. He
was such a good business man that h