rtwaist and a gold watch suspended
from her neck by a chaste, black silken cord; a strange lady with
symmetrical waves in her hair and gray on her temples, and with
glasses and an eager way of speaking.

She was talking very rapidly and animatedly, and the others were
listening and stealing glances now and then at one another. Once,
while they watched, the Little Doctor looked at Chip and then turned
her face toward the window. She was biting her lips in the way the
Happy Family had learned to recognize as a great desire to laugh. It
all looked suspicious and corroborative of Andy's story, and the Happy
Family shifted their feet uneasily in the loose snow.

They watched, and saw the strange lady clasp her hands together and
lean forward, and where her voice had before come to them with no
words which they could catch distinctly, they heard her say something
quite clearly in her enthusiasm: "Eight real cowboys _here_, almost
within reach! I must see them before I sleep! I must get in touch with
them at once, and show them that I am a true friend. Come, Mrs.
Bennett! Won't you take me where they are and let me meet my boys? for
they _are_ mine in spirit; my heart goes out to them--"

The Happy Family waited to hear no more, but went straightway back
whence they had come, and their going savored of flight.

"Mama mine! she's coming down to the bunkhouse!" said Weary under his
breath, and glanced back over his shoulder at the White House bulking
large in the night. "Let's go on down to the stable and roost in the
hay a while."

"She'll out-wind us, and be right there waiting when we come back,"
objected Andy, with the wisdom gained from his brief acquaintance with
the lady. "If she's made up her mind to call on us, there's no way
under Heaven to head her off."

They halted by the bunk-house door, undecided whether to go in or to
stay out in the open.

"By golly, she don't improve _me_!" Slim asserted pettishly. "I hate
books like strychnine, and, by golly, she can't make me read 'em,
neither."

"If there's anything I do despise it's po'try," groaned Cal Emmett.

"Emerson and Browning and Shakespeare and _Gatty_," named Andy
gloomily.

Whereat Pink suddenly pushed open the door and went in as goes one who
knows exactly what he is about to do. They followed him distressfully
and silently. Pink went immediately to his bunk and began pulling off
his boots.

"I'm going to bed," he told them. "You fellows can stay