ten minutes to make it clear to me, and when I saw the
whole project I was the happiest woman in Carleton or out of it. He
said he had never eaten such a Thanksgiving dinner as mine, and that I
was the woman he'd been looking for for years. He said that he had a
few business friends who had been brought up on a down-east farm like
himself, and never got over their hankering for old-fashioned cookery.

"That is something we can't get here, with all our money," he said.
"Now, Miss Porter, my nephew tells me that you wish to remain in
Carleton, if you can find some way of supporting yourself. I have a
proposition to make to you. These aforesaid friends of mine and I
expect to spend most of our time in Carleton for the next few years.
In fact we shall probably make it our home eventually. It's going to
be _the_ city of the west after awhile, and the centre of a dozen
railroads. Well, we mean to equip a small private restaurant for
ourselves and we want you to take charge of it. You won't have to do
much except oversee the business and arrange the bills of fare. We
want plain, substantial old-time meals and cookery. When we have a
hankering for doughnuts and apple pies and cranberry tarts, we want to
know just where to get them and have them the right kind. We're all
horribly tired of hotel fare and fancy fol-de-rols with French names.
A place where we could get a dinner such as you served yesterday would
be a boon to us. We'd have started the restaurant long ago if we could
have got a suitable person to take charge of it."

He named the salary the club would pay and the very sound of it made
me feel rich. You may be sure I didn't take long to decide. That was a
year ago, and today the Doughnut Club, as they call themselves, is a
huge success, and the fame of it has gone abroad in the land, although
they are pretty exclusive and keep all their good things close enough
to themselves. Joseph P. took a Scotch peer there to dinner one day
last week. Jimmy Nelson told me afterward that the man said it was the
only satisfying meal he'd had since he left the old country.

As for me, I have my little house, my very own and no rented one, and
all my dear boys, and I'm a happy old busybody. You see, Providence
did answer my prayers in spite of my lack of faith; but of course He
used means, and that Thanksgiving dinner of mine was the earthly
instrument of it all.

The Girl Who Drove the Cows

"I wonder who that pleasant-