hat he was universally known, Mrs. Mann was ready to contend and uphold
in any company. She carried with her in the black bag which always hung
upon her arm certain poems bearing her husband's confession of
authorship, which had been printed in the _Millers' Journal_, all of
them calling public attention to the noble office of his ancient trade.
Of course the miller was not of the party, so we really have nothing
more to do with him than we have with the rest of the throng that
arrived on the train with these singled-out adventurers. But his
influence traveled far, like a shadow reaching out after the heart of
his spare, pert, large-eyed wife. She was not yet so far away from him
that she dared move even her eyes as her heart longed.

In the manner of the miller's wife, there was a restraint upon the most
commonplace and necessary intercourse with strangers which seemed almost
childish. She even turned in questioning indecision toward June's mother
before taking a seat offered her by a strange man, feeling at the same
time of the black bag upon her arm, where the poems reposed, as if to
beg indulgence from their author for any liberties which she might
assume.

June's mother, Mrs. Malvina Reed, widow of that great statesman, the
Hon. Alonzo Confucius Reed, who will be remembered as the author of the
notable bill to prohibit barbers breathing on the backs of their
customers' necks, was duenna of the party. She was a dumpy, small woman,
gray, with lines in her steamed face, in which all attempts at
rejuvenation had failed.

Mrs. Reed was a severe lady when it came to respecting the conventions
of polite life, and June was her heart's deep worry. She believed that
young woman to be in the first stage of a dangerous and mysterious
malady, which belief and which malady were alike nothing in the world
but fudge. When she turned her eyes upon June's overfed face a moisture
came into them; a sigh disturbed her breast.

By one of those strange chances, such as seem to us when we meet them
nothing short of preconceived arrangement, enough seats had been left
unoccupied in the rear coach, all in one place, to accommodate a second
party, which came straggling through with hand-baggage hooked upon all
its dependent accessories. It proved very pleasant for all involved.
There the June party scraped acquaintance with the others, after the
first restraint had been dissolved in a discussion of the virtues of
canned tomatoes applied