ling eyes and that demurely smiling mouth at
the little window.

"Mrs. Baker!"

She put her finger quickly to her lips, and threw a world of unutterable
and enigmatical meaning into her mischievous face.

"There's a big San Francisco swell takin' my place at Laurel to-night,
Charley."

"Yes, ma'am."

"And it's a pity that the Omnibus Way Bag happened to get such a shaking
up and banging round already, coming here."

"Eh?"

"I say," continued Mrs. Baker, with great gravity and dancing eyes,
"that it would be just AWFUL if that keerful city clerk found things
kinder mixed up inside when he comes to open it. I wouldn't give him
trouble for the world, Charley."

"No, ma'am, it ain't like you."

"So you'll be particularly careful on MY account."

"Mrs. Baker," said Charley, with infinite gravity, "if that bag SHOULD
TUMBLE OFF A DOZEN TIMES between this and Laurel Hill, I'll hop down and
pick it up myself."

"Thank you! shake!"

They shook hands gravely across the window-ledge.

"And you ain't going down with us, Mrs. Baker?"

"Of course not; it wouldn't do,--for I AIN'T HERE,--don't you see?"

"Of course!"

She handed him the bag through the door. He took it carefully, but in
spite of his great precaution fell over it twice on his way to the
road, where from certain exclamations and shouts it seemed that a like
miserable mischance attended its elevation to the boot. Then Mrs. Baker
came back into the office, and, as the wheels rolled away, threw herself
into a chair, and inconsistently gave way for the first time to an
outburst of tears. Then her hand was grasped suddenly and she found
Green on his knees before her. She started to her feet.

"Don't move," he said, with weak hysteric passion, "but listen to me,
for God's sake! I am ruined, I know, even though you have just saved me
from detection and disgrace. I have been mad!--a fool, to do what I have
done, I know, but you do not know all--you do not know why I did it--you
cannot think of the temptation that has driven me to it. Listen, Mrs.
Baker. I have been striving to get money, honestly, dishonestly--any
way, to look well in YOUR eyes--to make myself worthy of you--to make
myself rich, and to be able to offer you a home and take you away from
Laurel Run. It was all for YOU, it was all for love of YOU, Betsy, my
darling. Listen to me!"

In the fury, outraged sensibility, indignation, and infinite disgust
that filled her little body at that mome