the famous
couplet, "You may break, you may shatter the vase if you will, but
the scent of the roses will hang round it still!" My route through
the settlement might be traced, I fancied, by the fragrance that
the melons exhaled.

My first stop was at the store where I disposed of a satisfactory
quantity of melons, but after leaving the store the business dragged
wearily, and I found myself obliged to take promises to pay in lieu of
money from the women of the household when the masculine head chanced
to be absent. They always explained, quite as a matter of course, that
"he" had left no money with them. It appeared to me, as I patiently
booked one promise after another, that "he" could not have kept
hired help very long if their wages consisted of nothing more
tangible--after the matter of food and lodging was eliminated--than
those that fell to the lot of "his" womenfolk. I had observed, with
some annoyance, when I first started out, that one of the wagon
wheels had a tendency to make plaintive little protests, as if it
objected to being put to any use. I could by no means fathom the
reason for it, but by mid-afternoon the protest had grown into a
piercing shriek. A shriek that even Guard shrank from with an
indignant growl.

Less than one-fourth of my load yet remained unsold. I was most
anxious to clear it all out, but that ear-piercing sound was becoming
maddening. "The wagon must be conjured," I thought, recalling some of
Joe's fancies. Coming to a place at last, where two roads met, I
halted the team and sat considering the question of a return home or a
trip to Crusoe, which place I had not yet visited, when the sight of a
horseman far down the left-hand road decided me to go in that
direction. The horseman was well mounted and going at a good pace. "I
don't care!" I told myself, recklessly, "I'm going to overtake him and
make him take some of these melons if I have to pay him for doing it."

But there was no occasion for my hurrying the horses. When the man on
ahead caught the sound of my rapidly-advancing shriek he promptly drew
up beside the roadway and awaited my approach, and then I saw that the
rider was Mr. Rutledge. He recognized me at the same moment and
exclaimed:

"Why, Miss Leslie, is that you?"

"Yes," I said, meekly, but I felt my face grow red, and was conscious,
in spite of my good resolutions, of a sudden resentment against Joe.
Why had he left me to do such work as this?

Mr. Rutledge