ightful scheme in her mind
for clearing everything up. She wanted to see how it would seem, for
once, not to have any litter of whittlings, of strings and marbles
and tops! No litter of beloved birds' eggs, snake-skins,
turtle-shells! No trail of the Boy anywhere.

It had taken the whole family to get the Boy off, but now he was
gone. Even yet the haze of dust the stage-coach had stirred up from
the dry roadway lingered like a faint blur on the landscape. It could
not be ten minutes since they had bidden the Boy his first good-bye.
The Mother smiled softly.

"But I did it!" she murmured. "Of course,--I _had_ to. The idea of
letting your Boy go off without kissing him good-bye! Mary," she
suddenly spoke aloud, addressing the Patient Aunt, who was following
the trail too, picking up the siftings from the other's apron--"Mary,
did you kiss him? There was really no need, you know, because you are
not his mother. And it would have saved his feelings not to."

The Patient Aunt laughed. She was very young and pretty, and the
"patient" in her name had to do only with her manner of bearing the
Boy.

"No, I didn't," she said. "I didn't dare to, after I saw him wipe
yours off!"

"_Mary!_"

"With the back of his hand. I am not near-sighted. Now _why_ should a
well-meaning little kiss distress a Boy like that? That's what I want
to know."

"It didn't once," sighed the Mother, gently. "Not when he was a baby.
I'm glad I got in a great many of them then, while I had a chance. It
was the trousers that did it, Mary. From the minute he put on
trousers he objected to being kissed. I put his kilts on again one
day, and he let me kiss him."

"But it was a bribe to get you to take them off," laughed the Patient
Aunt, wickedly. "I remember;--I was there. And you took them off to
pay for that kiss. You can't deny it, Bess."

"Yes, I took them off--and after that I kissed _them_. It was next
best. Mary, does it seem very _awful_ quiet here to you?"

"Awful. I never heard anything like it in my life. I'm going to let
something drop and make a noise." She dropped a tin trumpet, but it
fell on the thick rug, and they scarcely heard it.

The front gate clicked softly, and the Father came striding up the
walk, whistling exaggeratedly. He had ridden down to the corner with
the Boy.

"Well, well, well," he said; "now I shall go to work. I'm going up to
my den, girls, and I don't want to be called away for anything or
anybody lower th