e girl they
both wanted, after all--not the money. Rosalie, coming home with her
party some time afterward, found the old couple still seated on the
porch. The young people could not conceal their surprise.

"Counting the stars, pop?" asked Edna Crow.

"He's waiting for the eclipse," bawled noisy Ed Higgins, the grocer's
clerk. "It's due next winter. H'are you, Anderson?"

"How's that?" was Anderson's rebuke.

"I mean Mr. Crow," corrected Ed, with a nervous glance at Rosalie, who
had been his companion for the evening.

"Oh, I'm jest so-so," remarked Anderson, mollified. "How was the party?"

"It wasn't a party, Daddy Crow," laughed Rosalie, seating herself in
front of him on the porch rail. "It was an experience meeting. Alf
Reesling has reformed again. He told us all about his last attack of
delirium tremens."

"You don't say so! Well, sir, I never thought Alf could find the time to
reform ag'in. He's too busy gittin' tight," mused Anderson. "But I guess
reformin' c'n git to be as much a habit as anythin' else."

"I think he was a little woozy to-night," ventured 'Rast Little.

"A little what?"

"Drunk," explained 'Rast, without wasting words. 'Rast had acquired the
synonym at the business men's carnival in Boggs City the preceding fall.
Sometimes he substituted the words "pie-eyed," "skeed," "lit up," etc.,
just to show his worldliness.

After the young men had departed and the Crow girls had gone upstairs
with their mother Rosalie slipped out on the porch and sat herself down
upon the knee of her disconsolate guardian.

"You are worried about something, Daddy Crow," she said gently. "Now,
speak up, sir. What is it?"

"It's time you were in bed," scolded Anderson, pulling his whiskers
nervously.

"Oh, I'm young, daddy. I don't need sleep. But you never have been up as
late as this since I've known you."

"I was up later'n this the time you had the whoopin'-cough, all right."

"What's troubling you, daddy?"

"Oh, nothin'--nothin' at all. Doggone, cain't a man set out on his own
porch 'thout--"

"Forgive me, daddy. Shall I go away and leave you?"

"Gosh a'mighty, no!" he gasped. "That's what's worryin' me--oh, you
didn't mean forever. You jest meant to-night? Geminy crickets, you did
give me a skeer!" He sank back with a great sigh of relief.

"Why, I never expect to leave you forever," she cried, caressing his
scanty hair. "You couldn't drive me away. This is home, and you've been
too good to