so did the other lady.

"Why, Mary Ogden, my dear," she said, "Mrs. Potter and I did not know
you were going with us. It's quite a surprise."

"So it is to Jack and me," replied Mary quietly. "We were very glad to
have you come, though, if we can find room for your trunks."

"I can manage 'em," said Jack. "Miss Glidden, you and Mrs. Potter get
in, and Pat and I'll pack the trunks on somehow."

Pat was the man who had brought out the luggage, and he was waiting to
help. He was needed. It was a very full carriage when he and Jack
finished their work. There was room made for the passengers by putting
Mary's small trunk down in front, so that Jack's feet sprawled over it
from the nook where he sat.

"I can manage the team," Jack said to himself. "They won't run away
with this load."

Mary sat behind him, the other two on the back seat, and all the rest
of the carriage was trunks; not to speak of what Jack called a "young
house," moored behind.

It all helped Jack to recover his usual composure, nevertheless, and he
drove out of Crofield, on the Mertonville road, confidently.

"We shall discern traces of the devastation occasioned by the recent
inundation, as we progress," remarked Mrs. Potter.

Jack replied: "Oh, no! The creek takes a great swoop, below Crofield,
and the road's a short cut. There'll be some mud, though."

He was right and wrong. There was mud that forced the heavily laden
carriage to travel slowly, here and there, but there was nothing seen
of the Cocahutchie for several miles.

"Hullo!" exclaimed Jack suddenly. "It looks like a kind of lake. It
doesn't come up over the road, though. I wonder what dam has given out
now!"

There was the road, safe enough, but all the country to the right of it
seemed to have been turned into water. On rolled the carriage, the
horses now and then allowing signs of fear and distrust, and the two
older passengers expressing ten times as much.

"Now, Molly," said Jack, at last, "there's a bridge across the creek, a
little ahead of this. I'd forgotten about that. Hope it's there yet."

"Oh, dear me!" exclaimed Miss Glidden.

"Don't prognosticate disaster," said Mrs. Potter earnestly; and it
occurred to Jack that he had heard more long words during that drive
than any one boy could hope to remember.

"Hurrah!" he shouted, a few minutes later. "Link's bridge is there!
There's water on both sides of the road, though."

It was an old bridge, lik