e train
whistled, and she ran, breathless, to the road, to meet Lew Dinwoodie.

"What did Aunt Matty say, Lew?" called Mary Bell, peering behind him
into the closed surrey, for a glimpse of the old lady.

The man stared at her with a falling jaw.

"Well, I guess I owe you one for this, Mary Bell!" he stammered. "I'll
eat my shirt if I thought of your note again!"

It was too much. Mary Bell began to dislodge little particles of dried
mud carefully from the wheel, her eyes swimming, her breast rising.

"Right in her part of town, too!" pursued the contrite messenger; "but,
as I say--"

Mary Bell did not hear him. After a while he was gone, and she was
sitting on the steps, hopeless, dispirited, tired. She sombrely watched
the departing surreys and phaetons. "I could have gone with them--or
with them!" she would think, when there was an empty seat.

The Parmalees went by; two carriage loads. Jim Carr was in the phaeton
with Carrie at his side. All the others were in the surrey.

"I'm keeping 'em where I can have an eye on 'em!" Mrs. Parmalee called
out, pointing to the phaeton.

Everybody waved, and Mary Bell waved back. But when they were gone, she
dropped her head on her arms.

Dusk came; the village was very still. A train thundered by, and
Potter's windmill creaked and splashed,--creaked and splashed. A
cow-bell clanked in the lane, and Mary Bell looked up to see the
Dickeys' cow dawdle by, her nose sniffing idly at the clover, her downy
great bag leaving a trail of foam on the fresh grass. From up the road
came the faint approaching rattle of wheels.

Wheels?

The girl looked toward the sound curiously. Who drove so recklessly?
She noticed a bank of low clouds in the east, and felt a puff of cool
air on her cheek.

"It feels like rain!" she said, watching the wagon as it came near.
"That's Henderson's mare, and that's their wooden-legged hired man!
Why, what is it?"

The last words were cried aloud, for the galloping old horse and driver
were at the gate now, and eyes less sharp than Mary Bell's would have
detected something wrong.

"What IS it?" she cried again, at the gate. The man pulled up sharply.

"Say, ain't there a man here, nowhere?" he demanded abruptly. "I've
been banging at every house along the way; ain't there a soul in the
place?"

"Dance!" explained Mary Bell. "The Ladies' Improvement Society in
Pitcher's new barn. Why! what is it? Mrs. Henderson sick?"

"No, ma'am!" said the o