She was talking very rapidly and animatedly, and the others were listening and stealing glances now and then at one another. Once, while they watched, the Little Doctor looked at Chip and then turned her face toward the window. She was biting her lips in the way the Happy Family had learned to recognize as a great desire to laugh. It all looked suspicious and corroborative of Andy's story, and the Happy Family shifted their feet uneasily in the loose snow.
They watched, and saw the strange lady clasp her hands together and lean forward, and where her voice had before come to them with no words which they could catch distinctly, they heard her say something quite clearly in her enthusiasm: "Eight real cowboys _here_, almost within reach! I must see them before I sleep! I must get in touch with them at once, and show them that I am a true friend. Come, Mrs. Bennett! Won't you take me where they are and let me meet my boys? for they _are_ mine in spirit; my heart goes out to them--"
The Happy Family waited to hear no more, but went straightway back whence they had come, and their going savored of flight.
"Mama mine! she's coming down to the bunkhouse!" said Weary under his breath, and glanced back over his shoulder at the White House bulking large in the night. "Let's go on down to the stable and roost in the hay a while."
"She'll out-wind us, and be right there waiting when we come back," objected Andy, with the wisdom gained from his brief acquaintance with the lady. "If she's made up her mind to call on us, there's no way under Heaven to head her off."
They halted by the bunk-house door, undecided whether to go in or to stay out in the open.
"By golly, she don't improve _me_!" Slim asserted pettishly. "I hate books like strychnine, and, by golly, she can't make me read 'em, neither."
"If there's anything I do despise it's po'try," groaned Cal Emmett.
"Emerson and Browning and Shakespeare and _Gatty_," named Andy gloomily.
Whereat Pink suddenly pushed open the door and went in as goes one who knows exactly what he is about to do. They followed him distressfully and silently. Pink went immediately to his bunk and began pulling off his boots.
"I'm going to bed," he told them. "You fellows can stay up and entertain her if yuh want to--_I_ won't!"