" said Mr. Petter; "it was Nicaragua."

"Well, I knew it was the little end of some place," said she; "and now
he's coming back. Well, that is unfortunate."

"Unfortunate!" said Miss Calthea; "it's criminal. There ought to be a
law against such things."

Again the host of the Squirrel Inn moved uneasily on his chair and
crossed and recrossed his legs. He liked Lanigan Beam.

"I cannot see," he said, "why it is wrong for a man to return to the
place where he was born."

"Born!" scornfully exclaimed Miss Calthea; "it's the greatest pity that
there is any place where he was born; but there's no use talking about
him. He has written to them at the hotel at Lethbury that he will be
there the day after to-morrow, and he wants them to have a room ready
for him. If he'd asked them to have a grave ready for him it would have
been much more considerate."

Mr. Petter now rose to his feet; his manner was very dignified.

"Excuse me, Miss Calthea," he said, "but I must go and look after my men
in the cornfield."

Miss Calthea Rose sat up very straight in her chair.

"If there's anything you want to do, Mrs. Petter, I beg you won't let me
keep you."

"Now, Calthea," said Mrs. Petter, "don't work yourself into such a
terrible stew. You know Stephen doesn't like to have Lanigan pitched
into; I'm sorry for even what I said. But that about his grave was
enough to rouse a saint."

Miss Calthea was on the point of retorting that that was something which
Stephen Petter was not, by any means, but she restrained herself. If she
quarreled with the Petters, and cut herself off from visiting the
Squirrel Inn, a great part of the pleasure of her life would be gone.

"Well," she said, "we all know Lanigan Beam, and if there's anybody who
wants the peace of the community to vanish entirely out of sight, the
responsibility's on him, and not on me."

"Mrs. Petter," said Ida Mayberry, appearing so suddenly before that good
woman that she seemed to have dropped through the roof of the piazza,
"do you know where Mr. Tippengray is? I've been looking all over for
him, and can't find him. He isn't in his little house, for I knocked at
the door."

"Does Mrs. Cristie want him?" asked Mrs. Petter, making this wild grasp
at a straw.

"Oh, no," said Ida. "It is I who want him. There's a Greek sentence in
this book he lent me which I am sure I have not translated properly; and
as the baby is asleep now, there couldn't be a better time for him