tuffed with cotton, on Modestine's back.

Which brings me to Modestine.

Tish received three answers to her advertisement: One was a mule, one a
piebald pony with a wicked eye, and the third was a donkey. It seemed
that Stevenson had said that the pack animal of such a trip should be
"cheap, small and hardy," and that a donkey best of all answered these
requirements.

The donkey in question was, however, not a female. Tish was firm about
this; but on no more donkeys being offered, she bought this one and
called him Modestine anyhow. He was very dirty, and we paid a dollar
extra to have him washed with soap powder, as our food was to be
carried on his back. Also the day before we started I spent an hour or
so on him with a fine comb, with gratifying results.

I must confess I entered on the adventure with a light heart. Tish had
apparently given up all thought of the aeroplane; her automobile was
being used by Charlie Sands; the weather was warm and sunny, and the
orchards were in bloom. I had no premonition of danger. The adventure,
reduced to its elements of canned food, alcohol lamp, sleeping-bags and
toothbrushes, seemed no adventure at all, but a peaceful and pastoral
excursion by three middle-aged women into green fields and pastures new.

We reckoned, however, without Aggie's missionary dime.

Aggie's church had sent each of its members a ten-cent piece, with
instructions to invest it in some way and to return it multiplied as
much as possible in three months. This was on Aggie's mind, but we did
not know it until later. Really, Aggie's missionary dime is the story.
If she had done as she had planned at first and invested it in an egg,
had hatched the egg in cotton wool on the shelf over her kitchen range
and raised the chicken, eventually selling the chicken to herself for
dinner at seventy-five cents, this story would never have been written.

What the dime really bought was a glass of jelly wrapped in a
two-day-old newspaper. But to go back:

We were to start from Tish's at dawn on Tuesday morning. Modestine's
former owner had agreed to bring him at that hour to the alley behind
Tish's apartment. On Monday Aggie and I sent over what we felt we could
not get along without, and about five we both arrived.

Tish was sitting on the floor, with luggage scattered all round her and
heaped on the chairs and bed.

She looked up witheringly when we entered.

"You forgot your opera cloak, Lizzie," she said, "a