apiece, and retired to the lawn to enjoy them, he and Sidney sat
talking on in the pleasant dusk.

"You've asked eight, so far," he said, as she was departing for the
office an hour or so after dinner was finished, "but do you think
that's all?"

"Oh, it positively must be!" Sidney said virtuously, but there was a
wicked gleam in her eye that prepared him for her sudden descent upon
the office two days later, with the startling news that now she had
positively STOPPED, but fourteen children had been asked!

Barry, rather to her surprise, remained calm.

"Well, I've got an idea," he said presently, "that will make that all
right, fourteen children or twenty, it won't make any difference. Only,
it may not appeal to you."

"Oh, it will--and you are an angel!" said the lady fervently.

"I've got a friend up the country here in a lumber-mill," Barry
explained, "Joe Painter--he hauls logs down from the forest to the
river, with a team of eight oxen. Now, if he'd lend them, and you got a
hay-wagon from Old Paloma, you wouldn't have any trouble at all."

"Oh, but Barry," she gasped, her face radiant, "would he lend them?"

"I think he would; he'd have to come too, you know, and drive them.
I'll ride up and see, anyway."

"Oxen," mused Mrs. Burgoyne, "how perfectly glorious! The children will
go wild with joy. And, you see, my Indian boys--"

"Your WHAT?"

"I didn't mention them," said Sidney serenely, "because they'll walk
alongside, and won't count in the load. But, you see, some of those
nice little mill-boys who don't go to school heard the girls talking
about it, and one of them asked me--so wistfully!--if there was
anything THEY could do. I immediately thought of Indian costumes."

"But how the deuce will you get the costumes made?" said Barry, drawing
a sheet of paper toward him, and beginning some calculations, with an
anxious eye.

"Why, it's just cheese-cloth for the girls. Mrs. Brown and I have our
machines up in the barn, and Mrs. Carew and Mrs. Adams will come up and
help, there's not much to THAT! Barry, if you will really get us
this--this ox-man--nothing else will worry me at all."

"You'll have to put the beasts up in your barn."

"Oh, surely! Ask him what they eat. Oh, Barry, we MUST have them! Think
how picturesque they'll be! I've been thinking my entry would be a
disgrace to the parade, but I don't believe it will be so bad. Barry,
when will we know about it?"

"You can count on it, I gu