of her brother's rambling comment, and there was a decidedly expectant
intonation in her voice. "Nobody's usin' the company-room, an' the
presidin' elder won't be here till fall. Mr. Mostyn never was a bit of
trouble and seemed to love everything I set before him. But I reckon
we needn't feel so flattered. He's coming here so he'll be near Mr.
Saunders when he runs up to his place on Sundays."

John Webb, for such a slow individual, had suddenly taken on a new
impetus. He left his sister and her husband and passed through the
passage bisecting the lower part of the plain two-story house and went
out at the rear door. In the back yard he found his nephew, George
Drake, a boy of fifteen years, seated on the grass repairing a ragged,
mud-stained fish-net.

"Who told you you could be out o' school, young feller?" John
demanded, dryly. "I'll bet my life you are playin' hookey. You think
because your sister's the teacher you can run wild like a mountain
shote. My Lord, look at your clothes! I'll swear it would be hard to
tell whether you've got on anything or not--that is, anything except
mud an' slime. Have you been tryin' to pull that seine through the
creek by yourself?"

The boy, who had a fine head and profile and was stoutly built and
generally good-looking, was too busy with his strings and knots to
look up. "Some fool left it in the creek, and it's laid there for the
last month," he mumbled. "I had to go in after it, and it was all
tangled up and clogged with mud. Dolly knew I wasn't going to school
to-day."

"She knew it when you didn't turn up at roll-call, I bound you," Webb