th him, and so did Aunt Melinda; but Jack and Mary
finished their suppers and went out to the front door. She stood still
for a moment, with her hands clasped behind her, looking across the
street, as if she were reading the sign on the shop. The discontented,
despondent expression on her face made her more and more like a very
young and pretty copy of her father.

"I don't care, Molly," said Jack. "If they take away every cent I get,
I'm going to the city, some time."

"I'd go, too, if I were a boy," she said. "I've got to stay at home
and wash dishes and sweep. You can go right out and make your fortune.
I've read of lots of boys that went away from home and worked their way
up. Some of 'em got to be Presidents."

"Some girls amount to something, too," said Jack. "You've been through
the Academy. I had to stop, when I was twelve, and go to work in a
store. Been in every store in Crofield. They didn't pay me a cent in
cash, but I learned the grocery business, and the dry-goods business,
and all about crockery. That was something. I could keep a store.
Some of the stores in New York 'd hold all the stores in Crofield."

"Some of 'em are owned and run by women, too," said Mary; "but there's
no use of my thinking of any such thing."

Before he could tell her what he thought about it, her mother called
her in, and then he, too, stood still and seemed to study the sign over
the door of the blacksmith-shop.

"I'll do it!" he exclaimed at last, shaking his fist at the sign. "It
isn't the end of July yet, and I'm going to get to the city before
Christmas; you see 'f I don't."

After Mary Ogden left him and went in, Jack walked down to the bridge.
It seemed as if the Cocahutchie had a special attraction for him, now
that he knew what might be in it.

There were three boys leaning over the rail on the lower side of the
bridge, and four on the upper side, and all were fishing. Jack did not
know, and they did not tell him, that all their hooks were baited with
"flies" of one kind or another instead of worms. Two had grasshoppers,
and one had a big bumblebee, and they were after such trout as Jack
Ogden had caught and been paid so much money for. One told another
that Jack had five dollars apiece for those fish, and that even the
bullheads were so heavy it tired him to carry them home.

Jack did not go upon the bridge. He strolled down along the water's
edge.

[Illustration: _Along the Water's Edge_.]