ring what
sort of people you would be."

"Wal," drawled Uncle Jason, rather staggered by the way Janice "ran
on," "we reckon on makin' ye comferble. Looks like we'd have ye with
us some spell, too. Broxton writ me that he didn't know how long he'd
be gone--down there in Mexico."

"No. Poor Daddy couldn't tell. The business must be 'tended to, I
s'pose----"

"Right crazy of him to go there," grunted Uncle Jason. "May git shot
any minute. Ain't _no_ money wuth that, I don't believe."

This rather tactless speech made the girl suddenly look grave; but it
did not quench her vivacity. She was staring about the dock,
interested in everything she saw, when Uncle Jason drawled:

"I s'pose ye got a trunk, Janice?"

"Oh, yes. Here is the check," and she began to skirmish in her purse.

"Wal! there ain't no hurry. Marty'll come down by-me-by with the
wheelbarrer and git it for ye."

"But my goodness!" exclaimed the girl from Greensboro. "I haven't
anything fit to put on in this bag; everything got rumpled so aboard
the train. I'll want to change just as soon as I get to the house,
Uncle."

"Wal!" Uncle Jason was staggered. He had given up thinking quickly
years before. This was an emergency that floored him.

"Why! isn't that the expressman there? And can't he take my trunk
right up to the house?" continued the girl.

"Ya-as; that's Walky Dexter," admitted Mr. Day.

A stout, red-faced man was backing a raw-boned nag in front of a farm
wagon, down upon the wharf and toward a little heap of baggage that had
been run ashore from the lower deck of the _Constance Colfax_. Janice,
still lugging her suitcase, shot up the dock toward the expressman,
leaving Jason, slack-jawed and well-nigh breathless.

"Jefers-pelters! What a flyaway critter she is!" the man muttered. "I
don't see whatever we're a-goin' to do with _her_."

Meanwhile Janice got Mr. Dexter's attention immediately. "There's my
trunk right there, Mr. Dexter," she cried. "And here's the check. You
see it--the brown trunk with the brass corners?"

"I see it, Miss. All right. I'll git it up to Jason's some time this
arternoon."

"Oh, Mr. Dexter!" she cried, shaking her head at him, but smiling, too.
"That will not do at all! I want to unpack it at once. I need some of
the things in it, for I've been traveling two days. Can't you take it
on your first load?"

"Wa-al--I might," confessed Dexter, looking her over with a quizzical
smi