We'll give you time to put your gloves and a bottle of horse-radish and
a nail-file and hammer into that neat travelling-bag of yours.

"Now let me go up and get clean again. That lovely alkali dust has
worked clear into my bearings so I'm liable to have a hot box just as
we get the line open ninety miles ahead."

At dinner and afterwards the new West and the old aligned themselves
into hostile camps, as of yore. The young people chatted with lively
interest of the coming change, of the New York people who had visited
the mine, of the attractions and advantages of life in New York.

Uncle Peter, though he had long since recognised his cause as lost,
remained doggedly inimical to the migration. The home was being broken
up and he was depressed.

"Anyhow, you'll soon be back," he warned them. "You won't like it a
mite. I tried it myself thirty years ago. I'll jest camp here until you
do come back. My! but you'll be glad to get here again."

"Why not have Billy Brue come stay with you," suggested Mrs. Bines, who
was hurting herself with pictures of the old man's loneliness, "in case
you should want a plaster on your back or some nutmeg tea brewed, or
anything? That Wung is so trifling."

"Maybe I might," replied the old man, "but Billy Brue ain't exactly
broke to a shack like this. I know just what he'd do all his spare
time; he'd set down to that new-fangled horseless piano and play it to
death."