OAT.

THE day was one of the best days in June, with warm sunshine and a cool
breeze from the east, for when Betty Leicester stepped from a hot car to
the station platform in Riverport the air had a delicious sea-flavor.
She wondered for a moment what this flavor was like, and then thought of
a salt oyster. She was hungry and tired, the journey had been longer
than she expected, and, as she made her way slowly through the crowded
station and was pushed about by people who were hurrying out of or into
the train, she felt unusually disturbed and lonely. Betty had traveled
far and wide for a girl of fifteen, but she had seldom been alone, and
was used to taking care of other people. Papa himself was very apt to
forget important minor details, and she had learned out of her loving
young heart to remember them, and was not without high ambitions to
make their journeys as comfortable as possible. Still, she and her
father had almost always been together, and Betty wondered if it had not
after all been foolish to make a certain decision which involved not
seeing him again until a great many weeks had gone by.

The cars moved away and the young traveler went to the ticket-office to
ask about the Tideshead train. The ticket-agent looked at her with a
smile.

"Train's gone half an hour ago!" he said, as if he were telling Betty
some good news. "There'll be another one at eight o'clock to-morrow
morning, and the express goes, same as to-day, at half past one. I
suppose you want to go to Tideshead town; this road only goes to the
junction and then there's a stage, you know." He looked at Betty
doubtfully and as if he expected an instant decision on her part as to
what she meant to do next.

"I knew that there was a stage," she answered, feeling a little alarmed,
but hoping that she did not show it. "The time-table said there was a
train to meet this"--

"Oh, that train is an express now and doesn't stop. Everything's got to
be sacrificed to speed."

The ticket-agent had turned his back and was looking over some papers
and grumbling to himself, so that Betty could no longer hear what he was
pleased to say. As she left the window an elderly man, whose face was
very familiar, was standing in the doorway.

"Well, ma'am, you an' I 'pear to have got left. Tideshead, you said, if
I rightly understood?"

"Perhaps there is somebody who would drive us there," said Betty. She
never had been called ma'am before, and it was most sur