not to be done that night. He
had scarcely picked up his brush before the doorbell rang once
more. Returning to the outer room, he found his recent visitor,
the swordfish under one arm and the doll under the other, standing
in the aisle between the stacked mills and vanes and looking, so it
seemed to him, considerably perturbed.

"Well, well!" he exclaimed. "Back again so soon? What's the
matter; forget somethin', did you?"

Miss Armstrong shook her head.

"No-o," she said. "But--but--"

"Yes? But what?"

"Don't you think--don't you think it is pretty dark for little
girls to be out?"

Jed looked at her, stepped to the door, opened it and looked out,
and then turned back again.

"Why," he admitted, "it is gettin' a little shadowy in the corners,
maybe. It will be darker in an hour or so. But you think it's too
dark for little girls already, eh?"

She nodded. "I don't think Mamma would like me to be out when it's
so awful dark," she said.

"Hum! . . . Hum. . . . Does your mamma know where you are?"

The young lady's toe marked a circle on the shop floor.

"No-o," she confessed, "I--I guess she doesn't, not just exactly."

"I shouldn't be surprised. And so you've come back because you was
afraid, eh?"

She swallowed hard and edged a little nearer to him.

"No-o," she declared, stoutly, "I--I wasn't afraid, not very; but--
but I thought the--the swordfish was pretty heavy to carry all
alone and--and so--"

Jed laughed aloud, something that he rarely did.

"Good for you, sis!" he exclaimed. "Now you just wait until I get
my hat and we'll carry that heavy fish home together."

Miss Armstrong looked decidedly happier.

"Thank you very much," she said. "And--and, if you please, my name
is Barbara."

CHAPTER IV

The Smalley residence, where Mrs. Luretta Smalley, relict of the
late Zenas T., accommodated a few "paying guests," was nearly a
mile from the windmill shop and on the Orham "lower road." Mr.
Winslow and his new acquaintance took the short cuts, through by-
paths and across fields, and the young lady appeared to have
thoroughly recovered from her misgivings concerning the dark--in
reality it was scarcely dusk--and her doubts concerning her ability
to carry the "heavy" swordfish without help. At all events she
insisted upon carrying it alone, telling her companion that she
thought perhaps he had better not touch it as it was so very, very
brittle and might get broken, and