mile and continued
on to his room.

CHAPTER IV

ANN GOSSAWAY'S RED CLOAK

The merrymakings at Yardley continued for weeks, a new impetus and
flavor being lent them by the arrival of two of Lucy's friends--her
schoolmate and bosom companion, Maria Collins, of Trenton, and Maria's
devoted admirer, Max Feilding, of Walnut Hill, Philadelphia.

Jane, in her joy over Lucy's home-coming, and in her desire to meet her
sister's every wish, gladly welcomed the new arrivals, although Miss
Collins, strange to say, had not made a very good impression upon her.
Max she thought better of. He was a quiet, well-bred young fellow;
older than either Lucy or Maria, and having lived abroad a year, knew
something of the outside world. Moreover, their families had always
been intimate in the old days, his ancestral home being always open to
Jane's mother when a girl.

The arrival of these two strangers only added to the general gayety.
Picnics were planned to the woods back of Warehold to which the young
people of the town were invited, and in which Billy Tatham with his
team took a prominent part. Sailing and fishing parties outside of
Barnegat were gotten up; dances were held in the old parlor, and even
tableaux were arranged under Max's artistic guidance. In one of these
Maria wore a Spanish costume fashioned out of a white lace shawl
belonging to Jane's grand-mother draped over her head and shoulders,
and made the more bewitching by a red japonica fixed in her hair, and
Lucy appeared as a dairy-maid decked out in one of Martha's caps,
altered to fit her shapely head.

The village itself was greatly stirred.

"Have you seen them two fly-up-the-creeks?" Billy Tatham, the
stage-driver, asked of Uncle Ephraim Tipple as he was driving him down
to the boat-landing.

"No, what do they look like?"

"The He-one had on a two-inch hat with a green ribbon and wore a white
bob-tail coat that 'bout reached to the top o' his pants. Looks like he
lived on water-crackers and milk, his skin's that white. The She-one
had a set o' hoops on her big as a circus tent. Much as I could do to
git her in the 'bus--as it was, she come in sideways. And her trunk!
Well, it oughter been on wheels--one o' them travellin' houses. I
thought one spell I'd take the old plug out the shafts and hook on to
it and git it up that-a-way."

"Some of Lucy's chums, I guess," chuckled Uncle Ephraim. "Miss Jane
told me they were coming. How long are they going to