is snoot fer him. After all the items I've give him, too. That's
all the thanks you git fer gittin' up news fer them blamed reporters.
But I'll show him! I wonder what he'd think if I traced that baby right
up to his own--_What's_ that, Eva? Well, now, you don't know anything
about it neither, so keep your mouth shet. Harry Squires is a purty sly
cuss. Mebby it's his'n. You ain't supposed to know. You jest let me do
my own deducin'. I don't want no blamed woman tellin' me who to shadder.
An' you, too, Edner; get out of the way, consarn ye! The next thing
_you'll_ be tellin' me what to do--an' me your father, too!"

And that is why Anderson Crow resumed his search for the parents of
Rosalie Gray. Not that he hoped or expected to find them, but to offset
the pernicious influence of Harry's "item." For many days he followed
the most highly impossible clews, some of them intractable, to supply a
rather unusual word of description. In other words, they reacted with a
vigour that often found him unprepared but serene. Consequences bothered
Anderson but little in those days of despised activity.

It is not necessary to dwell upon the incidents of the ensuing years,
which saw Rosalie crawl from babyhood to childhood and then stride
proudly through the teens with a springiness that boded ill for Father
Time. Regularly each succeeding February there came to Anderson Crow a
package of twenty dollar bills amounting to one thousand dollars, the
mails being inscrutable. The Crow family prospered correspondingly, but
there was a liberal frugality behind it all that meant well for Rosalie
when the time came for an accounting. Anderson and Eva "laid by" a
goodly portion of the money for the child, whom they loved as one of
their own flesh and blood. The district school lessons were followed
later on by a boarding-school education down State, and then came the
finishing touches at Miss Brown's in New York.

Rosalie grew into a rare flower, as dainty as the rose, as piquant as
the daisy. The unmistakable mark of the high bred glowed in her face,
the fine traces of blue blood graced her every movement, her every tone
and look. At the time that she, as well as every one else in Tinkletown,
for that matter, was twenty years older than when she first came to
Anderson's home, we find her the queen of the village, its one rich
human possession, its one truly sophisticated inhabitant. Anderson Crow
and his wife were so proud of her that they fo