“I don’t understand,” I said.
Mama bent and kissed my forehead. “You don’t understand now, but if you remember what I said, you’ll understand someday.”
She was right. I didn’t understand then, but I do now.
CHAPTER 3
THE NEXT MONTH AND A HALF WAS A BUSY TIME. EVERYTHING IN THE house had to be cleaned and wrapped up and packed in crates and shipped off to the North Plains Territory. It seemed as if no one had a minute to spare for anything but cleaning and packing. Hugh tried to sneak all his schoolbooks into the very first box, so that he wouldn’t have to do lessons for a month, but Papa found them and took them out again.
Then there were the aunts and uncles and cousins, who all came by at one time or another to marvel at what Papa was doing—or shake their heads over it, depending. All except Aunt Janna and Uncle Earn, that is. They didn’t come next nor near the house the whole time we were getting ready to leave.
The rest of the aunts and uncles more than made up for the two of them, though. The uncles all wanted to talk with Papa about the West and business opportunities and political questions. The aunts wanted to talk to Mama about living so much nearer to the frontier. Some of the aunts tried to commiserate with Mama, as if she must dislike the idea of moving West. Mama soon straightened that out, but that only set them all to wondering how she could dream of doing such a thing. And the cousins were so interested in telling us what to expect that they even forgot about teasing me.
“I heard there are great beasts, the size of a house, that can stamp you flat as paper!” Cousin Bernie said.