As for Vashti, she seemed suddenly revivified; she moved about
with a new step, swift, supple, silent, her head up, a new light in her face,
and her eyes, as they turned now and then on her father,
filled with a new fire. She did not talk much. "I'll a-teck care o' us all,"
she said once; and once again, when her mother gave something like a moan,
she supported her with a word about "the only ones as gives three
from one family." It was a word in season, for the mother caught the spirit,
and a moment later declared, with a new tone in her voice, that that was
better than Mrs. Stanley, and still they were better off than she,
for they still had two left to help each other, while she had not a soul.
"I'll teck care o' us all," repeated the girl once more.
It was only a few things that Cove Mills took with him that morning,
when he set out in the darkness to overtake the company
before they should break camp -- hardly his old game-bag half full;
for the equipment of the boys had stripped the little cabin of everything
that could be of use. He might only have seemed to be going hunting,
as he slung down the path with his old long-barrelled gun in his hand
and his game-bag over his shoulder, and disappeared in the darkness
from the eyes of the two women standing in the cabin door.
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