“Oh-h-h! I don’t want to met any bears.” Helen’s nose was pressed into a flat white spot in her desire to look deeper into the woods.

“Jo Bailey won’t let them touch you, will he, father?” said Ann reassuringly.

She turned to her father, who sat absorbed in watching the country flowing past his window. She knew how he loved the green fields and the woods, all the lovely shapes of things and the way they were placed on the green earth, for he painted them on wide, long canvases. Sometimes the things he painted didn’t look as Ann thought they ought to, but she always found him ready to explain why he made them so different from the way they had appeared to her eyes. People who knew about painting said that his work had unusually fine quality and Ann believed that soon he would be very famous and then there would be a great deal more money to spend than they had now. She would be able to go6 west and start a ranch with hundreds of horses and cowboys riding them. That was the dream of her life.

6

Ben didn’t care much about having more money. He was satisfied to sit and watch his father at work. Often Mr. Seymour gave him an old piece of stretched canvas to paint on while he sat so quietly there beside him. Ben liked to splash in the paint and try to do something himself.

In spite of being a boy he was not nearly as strong as Ann, although he was only two years younger. She could tumble him over easily, but she was unusually strong for her age. It was hard for Ann to remember always not to be too rough with Ben and Helen. She was not quite aware of how she was looking forward to being with Jo Bailey, for her father had said, “Jo’s as sturdy as they make ’em.” Jo, Ann knew, would be able to do everything she could and then do more. And Jo would tell them about bears and Indians, for though, like Ben, she knew perfectly well that no Indians or bears would be in the Pine Ledge woods, she liked to imagine that there might be some.

“Dad,” she said to Mr. Seymour, and he turned his keen smiling eyes toward her. “Jo will know whether bears come into his woods, won’t he? Tell Helen that Jo will take care of her.”

“I shouldn’t wonder,” answered Mr. Seymour, “but he will speak for himself in about one minute from now, for here we are.”

7 What a scurrying for coats and bags as the train pulled up before the square wooden box that was Pine Ledge station! They all climbed down the high 

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