er to
hev round"--

"What do you have him round for, then?" interrupted Miss Jinny sharply.

Mr. McClosky's eyes fell. "Ef he hedn't kem out of his way to-night to
do me a good turn, I wouldn't ask ye, Jinny. I wouldn't, so help me! But
I thought, ez I couldn't do any thing with him, you might come down, and
sorter fetch him, Jinny, as you did the others."

Miss Jenny shrugged her pretty shoulders.

"Is he old, or young?"

"He's young enough, Jinny; but he knows a power of things."

"What does he do?"

"Not much, I reckon. He's got money in the mill at Four Forks. He
travels round a good deal. I've heard, Jinny that he's a poet--writes
them rhymes, you know." Mr. McClosky here appealed submissively but
directly to his daughter. He remembered that she had frequently been
in receipt of printed elegaic couplets known as "mottoes," containing
enclosures equally saccharine.

Miss Jenny slightly curled her pretty lip. She had that fine contempt
for the illusions of fancy which belongs to the perfectly healthy young
animal.

"Not," continued Mr. McClosky, rubbing his head reflectively, "not ez
I'd advise ye, Jinny, to say any thing to him about poetry. It ain't
twenty minutes ago ez I did. I set the whiskey afore him in the
parlor. I wound up the music-box, and set it goin'. Then I sez to him,
sociable-like and free, 'Jest consider yourself in your own house, and
repeat what you allow to be your finest production,' and he raged. That
man, Jinny, jest raged! Thar's no end of the names he called me. You
see, Jinny," continued Mr. McClosky apologetically, "he's known me a
long time."

But his daughter had already dismissed the question with her usual
directness. "I'll be down in a few moments, father," she said after a
pause, "but don't say any thing to him about it--don't say I was abed."

Mr. McClosky's face beamed. "You was allers a good girl, Jinny," he
said, dropping on one knee the better to imprint a respectful kiss on
her forehead. But Jenny caught him by the wrists, and for a moment held
him captive. "Father," said she, trying to fix his shy eyes with the
clear, steady glance of her own, "all the girls that were there to-night
had some one with them. Mame Robinson had her aunt; Lucy Rance had her
mother; Kate Pierson had her sister--all, except me, had some other
woman. Father dear," her lip trembled just a little, "I wish mother
hadn't died when I was so small. I wish there was some other woman in
the fam