frequently spent a quarter of an hour finding her evening paper.

"If he'd take the slightest pains he could throw it on this walk
that is ten feet wide!" she would tell herself indignantly, as she
pushed aside the branches of blue marguerites and the leaves of
calla-lilies, and peered into holes on either side of the steps near
the front gate, where the watering of the garden had washed away the
soil.

Miss Stratton had liked Harry very much, when he first became paper
boy. He had a frank manner that made him friends. At first he
carefully threw the paper on Miss Stratton's front piazza. He never
skipped an evening, as the former paper boy had sometimes done, and
Miss Stratton rejoiced that at last a paper boy who was reliable had
been found for the route. Months had passed, and while Harry was as
careful at some houses as before, Miss Stratton's was not among that
number. Harry had three 'customers on that street and he nightly
walked only as far toward Miss Stratton's as would enable him to
throw her paper and then, with two or three steps, throw another
paper to the neighbor diagonally across the street. A few more steps
would have made Harry sure that Miss Stratton's paper fell every
night squarely on the broad front path, but he "fired the paper at
her," as he expressed it, and the result was Miss Stratton's
otherwise unnecessary number of steps hunting after her paper. Yet
Harry would have scorned to cheat any customer. He fulfilled the
letter of the law. He delivered the paper.

Late one afternoon the minister and his wife, Mr. and Mrs. Landler,
came by invitation to take supper with Mrs. and Miss Stratton. After
a while, as they sat, pleasantly chatting, Mr. Landler spoke of a
ship that had been overdue for almost two weeks. A neighbor's son
was on board, and this fact caused Mr. and Mrs. Landler to look at
the papers, morning and night, as soon as possible, to ascertain if
anything had been heard of the missing vessel.

"That's what my daughter and I have been doing, too," returned Mrs.
Stratton. "I wonder if this evening's paper hasn't come, so we could
look?"

Her daughter glanced at the clock.

"Why, yes!" said she. "That paper ought to have come before now."

Miss Stratton went out and hunted carefully. No paper was visible,
search as she might.

"Perhaps it hasn't come yet," she said to the guests, when she came
in.

A little later she went out again. Mrs. Landler came to help search,
thoug