plentiful, where a man of even my age will be welcome."

"Your age, Papa Sherwood! How you talk," drawled Nan's mother in her
pretty way. "You are as young as the best of 'em yet."

"Employers don't look at me through your pretty eyes, Momsey," he
returned, laughing.

"Well," said his wife, still cheerfully, "my fishing seems to be
resultless yet. Perhaps the bait's gone off the hook. Had I better haul
in the line and bait again? I was always doing that when I went fishing
with Adair and his brothers, years ago, when I was a little girl."

Her husband shook his head. "Have patience, Jessie," he said.

He had few expectations from the Memphis letter; yet there was a most
surprising result from it on the way, something which by no possibility
could the little family in the Amity Street cottage have suspected.

Chapter IV. SWEEPING CLEAN

"My goodness me!" ejaculated Bess Harley. "Talk about the 'leaden wings
of Time.' Why! Time sweeps by us on electrically-driven, ball-bearing
pinions. Here's another week gone, Nan, and tomorrow's Saturday."

"Yes," Nan agreed. "Time flies all too quickly, for me, anyway. The
mills have been closed a week now."

"Oh, dear! That's all I hear," complained Bess. "Those tiresome old
mills. Our Maggie's sister was crying in the kitchen last night because
her Mike couldn't get a job now the mills were closed, and was drinking
up all the money they had saved. That's what the mill-hands do; their
money goes to the saloon-keepers!"

"The proportion of their income spent by the laboring class for
alcoholic beverages is smaller by considerable than that spent by
the well-to-do for similar poison!" quoted Nan decisively. "Mike is
desperate, I suppose, poor fellow!"

"My goodness me!" cried Bess again. "You are most exasperating, Nan
Sherwood. Mike's case has nothing to do with political Economy, and I do
wish you'd drop that study out of school----"

"I have!" gasped Nan, for just then her books slipped from her strap;
"and history, rhetoric, and philosophical readings along with it," and
she proceeded cheerfully to pick up the several books mentioned.

"You can't mean," Bess said, still severely, "that you won't go to
Lakeview with me, Nan?"

"I wish you wouldn't keep saying that, Bess," Nan Sherwood cried. "Is it
my fault? Don't you suppose I'd love to, if I could? We have no money.
Father is out of work. There is no prospect of other work for him in
Tillbury, he says, and," Na