me," grumbled Jabez Potter. "I hope you'll
get enough out of it to pay us for all the trouble and cost of your
going--that I do."

But even this seemingly unkind speech did not ruffle the girl's temper.

"You wait and see, Uncle Jabez--you just wait and see," she said,
nodding to him. "I'll prove it the best investment you ever made."

He didn't smile--Jabez Potter was not one of the smiling kind; but his
face relaxed and his eyes twinkled a little.

"I sha'n't look for cent. per cent. interest on my money, Niece Ruth,"
he said, and stumped into the house in his heavy boots.

Ruth Fielding, who had come to the Red Mill only a few months before,
having lost all other relatives but her great-uncle, who owned the
mill, ran into the kitchen, too, where a little old woman, with bent
back and very bright eyes, was hovering over the stove. The breakfast
was ready to be served and this little woman was pottering about,
muttering to herself a continual complaining phrase:

"Oh, my back and oh, my bones!"

Aunt Alvirah Boggs (who was everybody's Aunt Alvirah, but no blood
relation to either Ruth or her uncle) was not a morose person, however,
despite her rheumatic troubles. She smiled on Ruth and patted her hand
as the girl sat down beside her at the table.

"Seems like we'd be lost without our pretty leetle creetur about," said
Aunt Alvirah. "I don't see what the old house will do without her."

"I'll be home at Thanksgiving--if Uncle will let me," said Ruth,
quickly, and glancing at the old man; "and again at Christmas, and at
Easter. Why, the intervals will go like _that_," and she snapped her
fingers.

"All this junketing up and down the country will cost money, Niece
Ruth," admonished Uncle Jabez.

He was, by nature, a very close and careful man with money--a reputed
miser, in fact. And that he did hoard up money, and loved it for
itself, must be confessed. When he had lost a cash-box he kept in the
mill, containing money and other valuables, it had been a great trouble
to Uncle Jabez. But through a fortuitous train of circumstances Ruth
Fielding had recovered the cash-box for him, with its contents
untouched. It was really because he considered himself in her debt for
this act, and that he prided himself upon paying his debts, that Jabez
Potter had come to agree that Ruth should go away to school.

He had not done the thing in a niggardly way, when once he gave his
consent. Ruth's new trunk was at t