r
mistress's rights in the case. Therefore, it was upon a time-damaged,
cap-frilled countenance that Katharine Maitland's dismayed glance fell
as she sprang from the stage and inquired:

"Are you my Aunt Eunice?"

"Your--Aunt--Eunice! Thank my stars, I ain't aunt to nobody!" returned
the widow, almost as much alarmed by the appearance of this strange
maiden as she had been by the coachman's blast.

"It is a matter of thankfulness," retorted the girl, pertly, and
surveying the other with amused and critical eyes, which made Susanna
Sprigg "squirm in her shoes."

Reuben now slowly climbed down from his high seat, and removed from the
rumble a great trunk, a suit-case, a parcel of books, and a dog-basket;
and the stranger at once occupied herself in releasing from his confined
quarters a pug so atrociously high-bred that Susanna instantly
exclaimed:

"My stars! That dog's so humbly he must ache!"

Katharine would have given a crisp reply had not her attention been
distracted by Reuben's movements, who was waiting to receive his fare,
yet in such terror of the pug's snapping jaws that he was stepping up
and down in a lively fashion, as he rescued one foot and then the other
from his enemy's attack.

"'Pears to blame _me_ for bein' shut up in that there basket, don't he?
When anybody knows 'twasn't my fault at all. I hain't enj'yed the trip
no more'n what he has, hearin' him yelp that continual, an' I must say I
didn't expect, at my time o' life, to commence drivin' stage for dogs.
Here, sis, is your change. Good day to ye, an' a good welcome, I hope."

"Humph! You don't speak as if you really 'hoped' it, but quite the
reverse!" returned Punch's mistress, more shrewdly than courteously.

"Dreadful smart, ain't ye?" said Reuben, and drove away, putting his
horn to his lips, and thereby drowning any further remarks which the
stranger might have addressed to him.

Lifting the ungainly brute in her arms, the girl now turned and surveyed
the house beyond the gate, her heart far heavier with homesickness than
seemed consistent with her outward, flippant bearing.

What she saw was a wide, rambling frame house; wherever they showed
between the clambering vines which encircled it, its clapboards
glistening white and its shutters vividly green. The few leaves still
left upon the vines were scarlet, while behind the low roof rose maples
in the full glory of their autumn reds and yellows. The long front yard
was green and