cause I'm
a man."

"A pretty poor sort of one," flashed the girl. She started to go back
into the road, intending to go on to the postoffice, when the boy called
imploringly:

"Don't go yet. I like you even if you do catch butterflies and worms.
Come over and see me; won't you?

"I don't visit boys," loftily. "Besides, I don't know where you live."

"We live in the big white house just beyond you," he told her in an
injured tone. "You people are so inhospitable. I thought Missouri folks
were nice to strangers. My mother feels bad about it. We have been here
a whole month, and you haven't even noticed that we lived next to you."

"We have not been home very long ourselves," explained Bee, touched by
the allusion to Missouri. "You see, my father has been away from me for
a long, long time, and we have been so busy getting acquainted with
each other that we have not paid much attention to other people. Perhaps
we will come over to see you. I'll ask him. I must go on now; so,
good-bye."

"I'll just go along with you," said the boy, swinging into step by her
side. "You see my pony lost a shoe, and I had to wait for him to be
shod, so I walked out here a ways when I saw you coming. I'll just take
you back in my cart. It is a long, hot walk."

"Will you?" asked Bee gratefully. It was a long distance, and after the
chase the butterfly had given her she was glad of the offer. "It is very
kind of you."

"Oh, that's all right," he said in an offhand manner. "I like to be
obliging to my friends; and we are going to be friends, you know."

"Are we?" asked Bee, laughing outright. "Why, how do you know that you
will care to be after you know me?"

"We've got to be," he replied. "We live next to each other, and it would
be so convenient. I made up my mind that we'd be friends when I first
saw you."

"But you said that I was rude," reminded Bee. "I shouldn't think that
you would want to be friends with a rude girl."

"You said a few things, too," he retorted, laughing. "Are you going in
here?" as Bee stopped before the postoffice. "Then I'll bring the cart
here. Be sure you wait."

He scampered away, and Bee entered the office. There was a letter for
her father, and the girl congratulated herself that the offer of the
ride would enable her to get it to him quickly. She was anxious, too, to
show him that she had succeeded with the butterfly. She had not long to
wait until her new-found acquaintance appeared with his pony