you ever dare?"

"I was in the mood to dare anything that day."

"And did he answer; but of course he did."

"Yes--he answered. Though not right away."

"Was it a nice letter? Did he mind your having written? Paul, you
didn't ask him to send you--these," Hilary waved her hand rather
vaguely.

"Hardly--he did that all on his own. It wasn't a bad sort of letter,
I'll tell you about it by and by. We can go to the manor in style now,
can't we--even if father can't spare Fanny. Bedelia's perfectly
gentle, I've driven her a little ways once or twice, to make sure.
Father insisted on going with me. We created quite a sensation down
street, I assure you."

"And Mrs. Dane said," Patience cut in, "that in her young days,
clergymen didn't go kiting 'bout the country in such high-fangled rigs."

"Never mind what Mrs. Dane said, or didn't say," Pauline told her.

"Miranda says, what Mrs. Dane hasn't got to say on any subject,
wouldn't make you tired listening to it."

"Patience, if you don't stop repeating what everyone says, I shall--"

"If you speak to mother--then you'll be repeating," Patience declared.
"Maybe, I oughtn't to have said those things before--company."

"I think we'd better go back to the house now," Pauline suggested.

"Sextoness Jane says," Patience remarked, "that she'd have sure admired
to have a horse and rig like that, when she was a girl. She says, she
doesn't suppose you'll be passing by her house very often."

"And, now, please," Hilary pleaded, when she had been established in
her hammock on the side porch, with her mother in her chair close by,
and Pauline sitting on the steps, "I want to hear--everything. I'm
what Miranda calls 'fair mazed.'"

So Pauline told nearly everything, blurring some of the details a
little and getting to that twenty-five dollars a month, with which they
were to do so much, as quickly as possible.

"O Paul, really," Hilary sat up among her cushions--"Why, it'll
be--riches, won't it?"

"It seems so."

"But--Oh, I'm afraid you've spent all the first twenty-five on me; and
that's not a fair division--is it, Mother Shaw?"

"We used it quite according to Hoyle," Pauline insisted. "We got our
fun that way, didn't we, Mother Shaw?"

Their mother smiled. "I know I did."

"All the same, after this, you've simply got to 'drink fair, Betsy,' so
remember," Hilary warned them.

"Bedtime, Patience," Mrs. Shaw said, and Patience got slowly out of her
big,