it. They'll go faster than we, or can, if
they try," said Mattie Shannon.

"The 'little red' 's just ready," said Sin Saxon. "You needn't laugh.
That wasn't a pun. But oh, Miss Craydocke!"--and her tone suggested the
mischievous apropos--"what _can_ you have been doing to your nose?"

"Oh, yes!"--Miss Craydocke had a way of saying "Oh, yes!"--"It was my
knife slipped as I was cutting a bit of cord, in a silly fashion, up
toward my face. It's a mercy my nose served, to save my eyes."

"I suppose that's partly what noses are for," said Sin Saxon gravely.
"Especially when you follow them, and 'go it blind.'"

"It was a piece of good luck, too, after all," said Miss Craydocke, in
her simple way, never knowing, or choosing to know, that she was snubbed
or quizzed. "Looking for a bit of plaster, I found my little parcel of
tragacanth that I wanted so the other day. It's queer how things turn
up."

"Excessively queer," said Sin solemnly, still looking at the injured
feature. "But, as you say, it's all for the best, after all. 'There _is_
a divinity that shapes our ends, rough-hew them how we will.' Hiram, we
might as well drive on. I'll take the parcel, Miss Craydocke. We'll get
it there somehow, going or coming."

The wagon rolled off, veils and feathers taking the wind bravely, and
making a gay moving picture against the dark pines and gray ledges as it
glanced along. Sin Saxon tossed Miss Craydocke's parcel into the "little
red" as they passed it by, taking the road in advance, giving a saucy
word of command to Jim Holden, which transferred the charge of its
delivery to him, and calling out a hurried explanation to the ladies
over her shoulder that "it would take them round the Cliff,--the most
wonderful point in all Outledge; up and down the whole length of New
Hampshire they could see from there, if their eyes were good enough!"
And so they were away.

Miss Craydocke turned back into the house, not a whit discomfited, and
with not so much as a contrasting sigh in her bosom or a rankle in her
heart. On the contrary, a droll twinkle played among the crow's-feet at
the corners of her eyes. They could not hurt her, these merry girls,
meaning nothing but the moment's fun, nor cheat her of her quiet share
of the fun either.

Up above, out of a window over the piazza roof, looked two
others,--young girls, one of them at least,--also, upon the scene of
the setting-off.

I cannot help it that a good many different peopl