forgotten to come back."

The sun dropped lower and lower. The wayside shadows thickened. A
robin on the top-most branch of a locust sang a solo.

"There they are!" cried Miss Castlevaine.

The others looked eagerly down the road.

The thud of hoofs came out of the hush.

"Oh, it's only a team!" was the disappointed contradiction. "I saw
the dust and thought they were coming."

The buggy whirled up, the driver lifted his hat with a smiling
bow--and was gone.

"Mr. Randolph and Miss Puddicombe!" commented Miss Castlevaine.
"Who was he bowing to? Not me!"

"I have met him," responded Mrs. Albright.

"Oh! Maybe it was you, then. But he was looking at Miss Sterling!"

"She knows him, too, and so does Mrs. Adlerfeld."

"Oh!" repeated Miss Castlevaine. "I see him riding with that Miss
Puddicombe a good deal lately. Guess she's trying to catch him."

"They are coming now for certain!" exclaimed Mrs. Albright.

Away in the distance the returning party could be discerned. Soon
there was a waving of eager hands. The forward ones started on a
race.

"It's Miss Crilly and the children!" Mrs. Albright laughed. "Isn't
she game!"

Polly and David were ahead.

"Are you tired out waiting?" called Polly.

"Have you been to Buckline?" twinkled Mrs. Albright.

"Almost!" answered David.

"We've had such a time!" laughed Polly.

"Time!" burst in Miss Crilly. "We'd been goners, sure, if we
hadn't jumped like fleas! My! You oughter seen Miss Mullaly--if
she didn't go hand-springin' over that wall!"

"But what was it?" cried Mrs. Albright.

"A cow!"--"An ugly old cow!"--"She went bellowin' like Sancho Panza
set loose!"

"Did she chase you? What did you do?"

"She was coming for us, and we jumped over the wall! We were on
our way home," explained Polly.

"And David wanted to go and drive her off, so we could get by," put
in Leonora; "but I held on to him!"

"I could have done it as well as that man," insisted David, looking
somewhat disgusted at the lack of faith in his ability.

"He 'most got away from us!" laughed Miss Crilly. "We all had to
grab him!"

"Did the cow's owner come?" Miss Castlevaine queried.

"We don't know who it was," answered Polly. "We were hiding behind
some bushes the other side of the wall."

"Such a combobbery as that cow cut up! My! I thought she'd knock
the man into slivers!" said Miss Crilly.

"But she didn't!" observed David.

"No," said Polly, "he drove