d to stop and shake hands to get 'em out o'
the way?" Uncle Joe queried as he turned the colts' heads toward home.

Melinda had noticed. "I suppose they came out to see the train come in,"
she suggested.

"Nope; not exactly." Uncle Joe explained, "Looking out for automo_biles_
and flying airships have made trains of cars seem mighty common up this
way. Nope; the folks was out on account of you a-comin'."

"Me?" Having a guilty conscience Melinda glanced backward apprehensively
and made a motion as though to dodge a missile.

"Yep; and you'll find a lot of the relations at the house a-waitin' for
you."

"Why--what--? Now look here, Uncle Joe, there is no occasion to be
foolish about a little--"

"Foolish? Now, mebby some would call it foolish, but us folks up the
creek here we can't help feelin' set up some over findin' out we have a
second Milton or a Mrs. Stowe in the fambly."

Melinda looked at her relative's concave profile in sick suspicion. Was
the trail of the serpent over them all? But no, Uncle Joe was beaming
mildly with the satisfaction of having shown that although the literary
hemisphere was the unknown land, he had heard of a mountain and a minor
elevation or two; he was, as she had always believed, incapable of
satire.

For once Melinda was speechless. But Uncle Joe was likely to be fluent
when he got started. He cleared his throat and turned mild, suffused,
half-shamed blue eyes on his shrinking niece. "Yes, your piece has come
out in the paper, Melinda, and your folks are all-fired pleased with
you. I told Lucy this morning I wisht your poor Pap could come back to
earth for just this one day."

"Ah-h!" Melinda took a firm grip on the side of the buggy. "But I guess
you'll have to write another right off. There is some jealousy amongst
them that aren't in it," Uncle Joe went on. "I told 'em you couldn't put
the whole connection in or it would read like a list of 'them present'
at a surprise party. Your Aunt Lucy, she's just as tickled as a hen with
three chickens." The old man chuckled. "There it is all down in black
and white just like it happened, only different, about her spasm of
economy when she was cleanin' away Mary Emmeline's medicine bottles and
couldn't bear to throw away what was left over, but up and took it all
herself in one powerful mixed dose to save it, and had to have the
doctor with a stomach-pump to cure her of spasms, what wasn't so
economical after all. It's her picture ti