enty of time!"

"Maybe she missed the train!" Janet McFadden suggested tragically.

The crush subsided, the last stragglers passed through the gate, and
then, just as Janet remarked gloomily, "Well, I was perfectly sure she
wasn't coming!" a little girl with a baby in her arms alighted from a
coach far down the track and stood where she was while the conductor
piled the ground about her with boxes and parcels and baskets
innumerable.

"There she is! There she is!" Janet and Terence cried out together.

The gatekeeper looked at them a little less sternly. "Well, I guess you
can come in now."

Janet dashed through the gate with her arms raised high, calling out a
joyful "Rosie! Rosie!" George Riley and Terence followed close on her
heels, and in a moment Rosie and the baby were enveloped in a cloud of
hugs and kisses.

"Oh!" Rosie gasped, "but it's nice to be back! And I'm so glad to see
you all!... Here, Jarge, you take that heavy box and be awful careful.
It has jelly in it and canned fruit and I made them all myself, too!
Your mother taught me how.... You take the big basket, Terry. That's our
clothes. And I think you can take the basket of vegetables in the other
hand. Janet'll take that bundle, won't you, Janet? They's two dressed
chickens in it and I plucked them myself, too. Mis' Riley showed me how.
And you take the shoe-box, Janet. It's full of cookies. Hold it straight
so's not to break them.... I'll take that last basket in my other hand.
You can't guess what's in it, can they, Geraldine? It's Geraldine's
little pussy cat! We just couldn't leave it, could we, baby? Geraldine
named it herself. She named it Jarge."

"After me, I suppose," George said, and they all laughed as if this were
a mighty fine joke.

"Now are we ready?" Rosie asked, making a quick count of bundles and
baskets. "I'm not leaving anything, am I?"

George groaned. "I should hope not! Tell you one thing: I can't carry
any more. Say, Rosie, what have you filled your jelly glasses with?
Rocks?"

This was another fine joke and it carried them out of the station and
all the way to the cars.

"Now watch me play the Rube," George whispered with a wink. When the
conductor came for their fares, George fumbled in his pocket, counted
the change laboriously, then asked for an impossible transfer. The
conductor tried patiently to explain, at which George slapped him on the
shoulder and roared out: "Aw, go on! I'm a railroad man myself!" At t