Why, you resemble your mother almost as
much as your brother Ford resembles his father. You are only one door
from home here, and I'll have your trunk taken right over to the house.
Please, sit down a moment. Ah! my daughter Samantha, Miss Foster. Excuse
me a moment, while I call one of the men."

By the time their mother was fairly out of the room, however, Keziah and
Pamela were also in it, and Annie thought she had rarely seen three
girls whose appearance testified so strongly to the healthiness of the
place they lived in.

The flag-man's questions and Annie's answers were related quickly
enough, and the cause of Michael's blunder was plain at once.

The parlor rang again with peals of laughter, for Dab Kinzer's sisters
were ready at any time to look at the funny side of things, and their
accidental guest saw no reason for not joining them.

"Your brother Ford is out on the bay, crabbing, with our Dabney,"
remarked Samantha, as the widow returned. But Annie's eyes had been
furtively watching her baggage, through the window, and saw it swinging
up on a pair of broad, red-shirted shoulders just then, and, before she
could bring her mind to the crab question, Keziah exclaimed: "If there
isn't Mrs. Foster coming through the farm gate!"

"My mother?" And Annie was up and out of the parlor in a twinkling,
followed by all the ladies of the Kinzer family. It was really quite a
procession.

Now, if Mrs. Foster was in the least degree surprised by her daughter's
sudden appearance, or by her getting to the Kinzer house first instead
of to her own, it was a curious fact that she did not say so by a word
or a look.

Not a breath of it. But, for all the thoroughbred self-control of the
city lady, Mrs. Kinzer knew perfectly well there was something odd and
unexpected about it all. If Samantha had noticed this fact, there might
have been some questions asked; but one of the widow's most rigid rules
in life was to "mind her own business."

The girls, indeed, were quite jubilant over an occurrence which made
them at once so well acquainted with their very attractive new neighbor;
and they might have followed her even beyond the gate in the north fence
if it had not been for their mother. All they were allowed to do was to
go back to their own parlor and hold a "council of war," in which Annie
Foster was discussed from her bonnet to her shoes.

Mrs. Foster had been abundantly affectionate in greeting her daughter;
but when