more than even!--with you, dear lady," he
promised, releasing his tiller to shake his fist at Miss Herron's
unconscious and unbending figure, "if it takes all summer. I wonder if
she could have guessed. And it was planned so perfectly."

Barham laughed over the story, laughed again when at the Richmonds'
dance Lucy came back into the glare of the lights with the Fraser boy,
dazzled and bright-cheeked, after half an hour's absence in the
darkness of the great garden. And how many of the gossips would have
given their ears to have heard the long talk between Miss Agatha and
Lucy's father on the night of his arrival? So the slow summer drifted
by.

If the Revolutionary Daughters had not arranged their September
meeting on the day that a freight wreck made the trains from Barham
westward very late and irregular; if Miss Herron had not been waiting
a fretful half hour in the dusty station for the means of reaching the
meeting before it was over, when Archie Fraser drove his car thither
in a search for an express package, the latter part of this story
would have been very different. But as the boy stopped his panting,
throbbing machine at the edge of the platform, Miss Herron looked out
the window.

"I am waiting for a train," she remarked, on the heels of her stiff
little greeting, "for Oldport."

Archie glanced at the old lady's delicate dress and at the badge of
gold and enamel she wore on her breast. "The R. D.'s?" he asked,
respectfully.

"Exactly. I am one of the charter members, as you probably are aware.
And to miss the meeting is distinctly vexatious."

"I'm so sorry." He turned to the station agent. "How late's the
train?"

"Half an hour or so. She won't make up much comin' this far. And she's
got to let the express pass her."

Out by the platform the car murmured its steady, quiet song of power,
and quivered with its singing. Archibald started, stung by a sudden
hope. If only----

"That will bring you to Oldport very late, I'm afraid," he ventured,
feeling his way toward a compassing of his plan. The express package
could wait. "I'm very sorry. I wish----" Here he broke off his speech
to gaze pensively at the automobile.

"It's very annoying," said Miss Herron.

The station agent winced, as though she had laid a lash across his
shoulders, and in his awkward fashion endeavored to apologize for his
road's remissness. Like a tradesman reproved by his best customer, he
promised Miss Herron that "it sho