without thinking?"

"Ten dollars," said the man; and as he had the only wagon in the town we
had to pay it.

It was a lovely day, although very warm. The morning sun turned the
woods to fairylike glades. Tish sat on the front seat, erect and staring
ahead.

Aggie bent over and touched my arm lightly. "Isn't she wonderful!" she
whispered; "like some adventurer of old--Balboa discovering the Pacific
Ocean, or Joan of Arc leading the what-you-call-'ems."

But somehow my enthusiasm was dying. The sun was hot and there were no
berry-bushes to be seen. Aggie's fairy glades in the woods were filled,
not with dancing sprites, but with gnats. I wanted a glass of iced tea,
and some chicken salad, and talcum powder down my neck. The road was
bad, and the driver seemed to have a joke to himself, for every now and
then he chuckled, and kept his eyes on the woods on each side, as if he
expected to see something. His manner puzzled us all.

"You can trust me not to say anything, ladies," he said at last, "but
don't you think you're playing it a bit low down? This ain't quite up to
contract, is it?"

"You've been drinking!" said Tish shortly.

After that he let her alone, but soon after he turned round to me and
made another venture.

"In case you need grub, lady," he said,"--and them two suitcases don't
hold a lot,--I'll bring out anything you say: eggs and butter and garden
truck at market prices. I'm no phylanthropist," he said, glaring at
Tish, "but I'd be glad to help the girl, and that's the truth. I been
married to this here wife o' mine quite a spell, and to my first one for
twenty years, and I'm a believer in married life."

"What girl?" I asked.

He turned right round in the seat and winked at me.

"All right," he said. "I'll not butt in unless you need me. But I'd like
to know one thing: He hasn't got a mother, he says, so I take it you're
his aunts. Am I on, ladies?"

We didn't know what he was talking about, and we said so. But he only
smiled. A mile or so from our destination the horse scared up a rabbit,
and Tish could hardly be restrained from running after it with a leather
thong. Aggie, however, turned a little pale.

"I'll never be able to eat one, never!" she confided to me. "Did you see
its eyes? Lizzie, do you remember Mr. Wiggins's eyes? and the way he
used to move his nose, just like that?"

At the end of fifteen miles the driver drew up his horses and took a
fresh chew of tobacco.

"I guess