Old Man Fewkes came in just then, and cut into the talk by his surprised exclamation at seeing me there. He had supposed that I had gone out of his ken forever. He had thought that one winter in this climate would be all that a young man like me, free as I was to go and come as I pleased, would stand. As he spoke about my being free, he looked at his wife and sighed, combing his whiskers with his skinny bird's claws, and showing the biggest freckles on the backs of his hands that I think I ever saw. He was still more stooped and frail-looking than when I saw him last; and when I told him I had settled down for life on my farm, I could see that I had lost caste with him. He was pining for the open road. "Negosha," he said, "is the place for a young man. You can be a baron out there with ten thousan' head of rattle. But the place for me is Texas. Trees is in constant varder!" "But," said Ma Fewkes, repeating her speech of three years ago, "it's so fur, Fewkes!" "Fur!" he scornfully shouted, just as he had before. "Fur!" this time letting his voice fall in contempt for the distance, for any one that spoke of the distance, and for things in general in Iowa. "Why, Lord-heavens, womern, it hain't more'n fifteen hundred mile!" "Fewkes," she retorted, drawing her shoulders back almost as far as she had had them forward a moment before, "I've been drailed around the country, fifteen hundred miles here, and fifteen hundred miles there, with old Tom takin' mad fits every little whip-stitch, about as much as I'm a-going to!" "I don't," said Rowena, "see why you've got so sot on goin' into your hole here, an' pullin' the hole in after you. You hook up ol' Tom, pa, an' me an' you'll go to Texas. I'll start to-morrow morning, pa!" "I never seen sich a girl," said her mother; "to talk of movin' when prospects is as good f'r you as they be now!" "Wal, le's stop jourin' at each other," said Rowena, hastily, as if to change the subject. "It ain't the way to treat company." I discovered that Rowena was about to change her situation in the Blue-grass Manor establishment. She was going into "the Big House" to work under Mrs. Mobley, the wife of the superintendent, or as we called him, the overseer. "Well, that'll be nice," said I. "I don't want to," she said. "I like to wait on table better." "Then why do you change?" said I. "Mr. Gowdy--," began Ma Fewkes, but was interrupted by her daughter, who talked on until her mother was switched off from her explanation.