To the Rose a state was a state. That the distance yet to be traveled was double that already covered, and many times more difficult, did not occur to her. But when two weeks more had passed, and yet two more, and brought no further word from the little wayfarer, her heart grew very heavy again, and she haunted the camp post-office with each arrival of the stage.
And still another two weeks went by, and yet he did not come, and the days brought her no word. She did not know that the number of crackers obtained by Peanut for five cents had been reduced in his westward march from ten to eight, from eight to six, and that the bit of cheese received in exchange for the other five cents had grown so small that the little boy, alarmed, had feared to spend even the money necessary for another letter. The Rose did not know these things, and even had she known, it would hardly have lessened her anxiety.
She spent most of her time now in watching for him. The hundred days had by no means expired, but his letters had led her to hope that he had gained time and would be there sooner than he had calculated. According to her count, if a little boy could cross two states in four weeks, he could cross four states and something over in about nine weeks, and now twelve weeks had gone by and he had not come. The fact that he no longer wrote encouraged her to believe that at any moment he might walk in upon her.
But now came an added anxiety. A letter, indeed, not from Peanut, but a broken-hearted confession from Cynthia Schofield, who, good woman that she was, acknowledged everything, begging the Rose to forgive her, and to write if she knew aught of their little lad.
“It was all so strange and unsuited to him here,” she wrote. “I can see, now, how he belonged only there in those beautiful hills and how his life there would mean more to him, and to others, too, I believe, than here in the sordid clatter and struggle and deception that he could not endure—” Then, in closing, she added: “Sometimes I think he must have started home, and I am having notices posted and published all along the way, so that somebody may find him and keep him safely until I come. Poor little fellow! Where is he, and what is he doing to-night, out all alone in this great wicked waste of a world?”