so much."

"What kind of looking lady is she?" asked Anne.

"Oh, she's just a lady. Ma says she's mighty hotty. What's hotty, Anne?"
inquired Lizzie.

Haughty was a new word to Anne. But she hated to say "I don't know," and
besides words made to her pictures--queer ones sometimes--of their
meaning. "It means she warms up quick," she asserted. "Tell me about
her, Lizzie. How does she look?"

"She ain't so very tall and she's slim as a bean-pole," said Lizzie.
"Her hair's gray and her skin is white and wrinkly. And she wears long
black dresses. That's all I know."

"I want to see her. Let's sit at the head of the steps and watch for her
to come out," suggested Anne.

They sat there what seemed a long time but as the little old lady did
not appear, they finally ran off to play with Honey-Sweet and Nancy
Jane.

While they were thus engaged, Mr. Collins came from the mill. He shook
his dripping hat, and hung up the stiff yellow rain-coat that he called
a 'slicker.'

"I come by the station, wife," he announced. "And what you think? Thar's
a gre't big sign up, 'Lost child.'"

"Sho! Whose child's lost?" inquired Mrs. Collins.

"It's Anne," was the reply. "The printed paper give her name and age and
all. And it tells anybody that's found her or got news of her to let
them 'sylum folks know."

"As if anybody with a heart in their body would do that!" commented Mrs.
Collins. "I bound you let folks know she was here. If you jest had sense
enough to keep yo' mouth shet, Peter Collins! That long tongue of yours
goin' to be the ruin of you yet."

"I ain't unparted my lips," asserted her husband.

"Now ain't that jest like a man?" Mrs. Collins demanded of the clock.
"'Stead of trying to throw folks off the track, saying something like
'What on earth's a lost child doing here?' or 'Nobody'd 'spect a lost
child to come to my house!'"

"I wish you'd been thar, Lizbeth," said her admiring husband. "You'd
fixed it up. Well, anyhow, I ain't said a word, so don't nobody know
nothin' from me. All she's got to do is to lay low till this hub-bub's
over."

In that out-of-the-way place there seemed little danger of Anne's being
discovered. Mrs. Collins, however, made elaborate plans for her
concealment.

"Anne," she said, "would you mind me callin' you my niece Polly?"

Anne looked at her in questioning surprise.

"If so be people from the 'sylum was to look for you, you wouldn't want
to go back thar, would you?"

"Oh,