He still harped on Negosha, though, and during the evening while we were
fattening up on my bread and meat, which I had on a broad hint added to
our meal, he told me that what he really wanted was an estate where he
could have an artificial lake and keep some deer and plenty of ducks and
geese. Swans, too, he said could be raised at a profit, and sold to
other well-to-do people. He said that by good farming he could get
along with only a few hundred acres of plow land. Mrs. Fewkes grew more
indulgent to these ideas as the food satisfied her hungry stomach.
Celebrate believed that if he could once get out among 'em he could do
well as a hunter and trapper; while Surajah kept listening to the
honking of the wild geese and planning to catch enough of them with
baited hooks to feed the whole family all the way to Negosha, and
provide plenty of money by selling the surplus to the emigrants. Rowena
sat in her ragged dress, her burst shoes drawn in under her skirt,
looking at her family with an expression of unconcealed scorn. When she
got a chance to speak to me, she did so in a very friendly manner.

"Did you ever see," said she, "such a set of darned infarnal fools as we
are?"

Before the evening was over, however, and she had hidden herself away in
her clothes under a thin and ragged comforter in their wagon, she had
joined in the discussion of their castle in Spain in a way that showed
her to be a legitimate Fewkes. She spoke for a white saddle horse, a
beautiful side-saddle, a long blue riding-habit with shot in the seam,
and a man to keep the horse in order. She wanted to be able to rub the
horse with a white silk handkerchief without soiling it. Ah, well!
dreams hovered over all our camps then. The howling of the wolves
couldn't drive them away. Poor Rowena!