sp on the big hand. They were friends from that moment,
Eliphalet Hodges and Fred.

They went out to the old phaeton, with Miss Prime's parting injunction
ringing after them, "Don't keep that child out in the cold too long,
'Liphalet, an' bring him back here croupy."

"Oh, now, don't you trouble yoreself, Miss Hester: me an' Freddie air
a-goin' to git along all right. We ain't a-goin' to freeze, air we,
Freddie, boy? Ah, not by a long sight; not ef Uncle 'Liph knows
hisself."

All the time the genial man was talking, he was tucking the lap-robe
snugly about the child and making him comfortable. Then he clucked to
the old mare, and they rattled away.

There was a far-away look in Miss Prime's eyes as she watched them till
they turned the corner and were out of sight. "I never did see sich a
man as 'Liphalet Hodges. Why, a body 'd think that he 'd been married
an' raised a whole houseful o' childern. He's worse 'n a old hen. An' it
's marvellous the way Frederick took to him. Everybody calls the child
Freddie. I must learn to call him that: it will make him feel more
home-like, though it does sound foolish."

She went on with her work, but it was interrupted every now and then by
strange fits of abstraction and revery, an unusual thing for this
bustling and practical spinster. But then there are few of us but have
had our hopes and dreams, and it would be unfair to think that Miss
Hester was an exception. For once she had broken through her own
discipline, and in her own kitchen was spending precious moments in
dreams, and all because a man and a child had rattled away in a rickety
buggy.

CHAPTER V

"Goodness gracious, Mis' Smith," exclaimed Mrs. Martin, rushing
excitedly into the house of her next-door neighbour, "you 'd ought to
seen what I seen jest now."

"Do tell, Mis' Martin! What on airth was it?"

"Oh, I 'm shore you 'd never guess in the wide, wide world."

"An' I 'm jest as shore that I ain't a-goin' to pester my head tryin'
to: so go on an' tell me what it was."

"Lawsy me! what next 'll happen, an' what does things mean, anyhow?"

"I can't tell you. Fur my part, I 'ain't heerd what 'things' air yit."
Mrs. Smith was getting angry.

"My! Mis' Smith, don't git so impatient. Give me time to git my breath:
it 'll be enough, when I do tell you, to take away yore breath, jest
like it did mine."

"Sallie Martin, you do beat all fur keepin' a body on the hooks."

"T ain't my fault, Mis' Smi