"What about his missus?" asked Reginald, after a silence.
"She can come," Randolph said, magnanimously. "We'll build a piece to
the house."
The more they talked about it the more enthusiastic they became. Under
the glow of this new project they felt they could hurl contempt on Aunt
Patience and her unnatural hold on life.
"I don't know but what I would rather take 'elp from the livin' than
the dead, anyway," Reginald said, virtuously, that night before they
went to bed.
"They're more h'apt to ask it back, just the same," objected Randolph.
"I was just goin' to say," Reginald began again, "that I'd just as soon
take 'elp from the livin' as the dead, especially when there ain't no
dead!"
They began at once to write letters to their long-neglected brother
Fred, enthusiastically setting forth the charms of this new country.
They dwelt on the freedom of the life, the abundance of game, and the
view! They made a great deal of the view, and certainly there was
nothing to obstruct it, for the prairie lay a dead level for ten miles
north of them, only dotted here and there with little weather-bleached
warts of houses like their own, where other optimists were trying to
make a dint in the monotony.
The letters which went east every mail were splendid productions in
their way, written with ease and eloquence, and utterly untrammeled by
any regard for facts.
Their brother responded just as they hoped he would, and the twins were
greatly delighted with the success of their plan.
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