all the way from China! Just you come an' look!"

Jim East lifted the package out of the delivery cart, carried it up the
steps, and set it down at Abbie's feet.

"Just you look, Abbie! That there crate's made of little fishin' poles,
an' what's inside's all wrapped up in Chinee mats!"

Old Chris came around from the back of the house. Jim East grabbed his
arm and pointed at the bamboo crate:

"Just you put your nose down, Chris, an' smell. Ain't that foreign?"

Abbie brought her scissors. Carefully she removed the red and yellow
labels.

"There's American writin' on 'em, too," Jim East hastened to explain,
"'cause otherwise how'd I know who it was _for_, hey?"

Abbie carried the labels into the parlor and looked for a safe place for
them. She saw the picture-album and put them in it. Then she hurried
back to the porch. Old Chris opened one end of the crate.

"It's a plant," Jim East whispered; "a Chinee plant."

"It's a dwarf orange-tree," Old Chris announced. "See, it says so on
that there card."

Abbie carried the little orange-tree into the parlor. Who could have
sent it to her? There was no one she knew, away off there in China!

"You be careful of that bamboo and the wrappings," she warned Old Chris.
"I'll make something decorative-like out of them."

Abbie waited until Jim East drove away in his delivery cart. Then she
sat down at the table in the parlor and opened the album. She found her
name on one of the labels--ABBIE SNOVER, ALMONT, MICHIGAN, U. S. A. It
seemed queer to her that her name had come all the way from China. On
the card that said that the plant was a dwarf orange-tree she found the
name--Thomas J. Thorington. Thomas? Tom? Tom Thorington! Why, the last
she had heard of Tom had been fifteen years back. He had gone out West.
She had received a picture of him in a uniform, with a gun on his
shoulder. She dimly recollected that he had been a guard at some
penitentiary. How long ago it seemed! He must have become a missionary
or something, to be away off in China. And he had remembered her! She
sat for a long time looking at the labels. She wondered if the queer
Chinese letters spelled ABBIE SNOVER, ALMONT, MICHIGAN. She opened the
album again and hunted until she found the picture of Tom Thorington in
his guard's uniform. Then she placed the labels next to the picture,
closed the album, and carefully fastened the adjustable clasp.

* * *

Under Abbie's constant attention, the little or