For the first few miles the conversation of his elders did not interest him much. He was so busy watching for the first signs of a railway train that the smoke from every far-away chimney attracted his attention; but after a while, when there was nothing to see but the thick growths of birch and maple each side the road, he heard his father saying:
"Well, Betsey, I think thee has earned this holiday. Thee has had a busy spring."
[Illustration: AN OLD-FASHIONED TRAIN OF CARS]
"It has been a busy time," agreed Mrs. Wheeler. "But all the house-cleaning is done and every stitch of the spring sewing. Since April I've cut and made sixteen dresses and six suits of clothes."
"Did thee read in the Worcester _Spy_ last week, Betsey," inquired Uncle William, "of a sewing machine that bids fair to be a success?"
"A sewing machine!" echoed Mrs. Wheeler. "Does thee mean a machine that actually sews as a woman sews? That's too good to be true!"
"But it's bound to come, Betsey," said her husband reassuringly. "We're keeping house to-day much as the early settlers did. We've found better ways of travel, and labor-saving inventions are the next thing." Then, turning to his brother, he added, "Tell us, William, what the _Spy_ said."
"Well, it seems there's a young man in Boston who has a good deal of ingenuity, and he actually has a sewing machine on exhibition at a tailor's there. For some days he's been sewing seams with it, the paper said, at the rate of three hundred stitches to the minute. Perhaps we shall find that tailor's shop to-morrow."
"I should like nothing better," answered Mrs. Wheeler. "Maybe we can buy Jonathan's trousers there."
Jonathan had been an interested listener to this conversation; but just then he caught sight of a moving column of smoke, and for the rest of the drive he thought of little else but the engine he could scarcely wait to see. By ten o'clock came South Acton; then the long hours while his elders ate slowly and talked much; at last the wonderful, puffing, noisy engine and the strange, flat-roofed houses on wheels with their many little windows. Jonathan's world had grown very large indeed when he went to sleep that night at the City Tavern in Brattle Street.