ternation descended on the Band of Hope. "Hell!" exclaimed
Mr. Dutton, and dropped his broom with a crash. There was a mad scurry
to escape. The little president was forgotten in the pellmell rush, and
from the height of her table she perceived her friends flying away
without a word of farewell. No, not all. The faithful Mr. Bob, quiet and
masterful even in that panicky moment of the missionary's return, came
up to her, and taking her hand in both his own, nuzzled it long and
lovingly against his cheek.

"Little Daisy," he said, and his voice sounded kind of strange and
different, "I want you to give a message to your pa--a message from me,
you say to 'im--and that is, 'e'll never 'ave no more trouble with the
boys down the shore. And if any of them gets fresh, or gives 'im any
lip, or 'oots--you tell 'im this, Daisy--I'll break every bone of 'is
body, so 'elp me, Moses. And it _h_ain't because of 'im, or anythink the
like of that, but because he's the father of the darlingest little gal
that _h_ever breathed, and the sweetest and the dearest."

Daisy flung her arms around his neck and kissed him; and as her face
pressed his, rough as mahogany and hairy as a mat, she felt it all wet
with tears.

Daisy was still wondering what it was that could make Mr. Bob cry, when
he suddenly let her go, and walked out of the door in his funny, heavy,
lurching sea walk, looking straight before him, and unheeding the "Happy
Noo Year, Mr. Bob!" she called after him in a pitiful little voice.

"Poor Mr. Bob!" said Daisy to herself; and then, happening to put her
hand to her hair, she discovered that the red ribbon was gone!

"He must have stole it for a keepsake when I was kissing him!" she
exclaimed. "Oh, you bad, bad Mr. Bob!"

But her eyes sparkled nevertheless, as she ran out to greet papa and
mamma.

OLD DIBS

His beginnings was a mystery, where he come from a conjecture, and his
business in Manihiki Island one of them things that bothered a fellow in
his sleep and yapped at his heels when he was awake. Captain Corker had
picked him up at Penrhyn, and the trader there said he had been landed
from a barkentine, lumber laden, from Portland, and from there back
there was a haze on his past thicker than Bobby Carter's. Leastways,
with Bobby there was his forty-five different stories to account for the
leg-iron scars on his ankles, but with Old Dibs you hadn't even that to
chew on. Nothing but five large new trunks and t