plained, as soon as I
had recovered my composure, "and I shall never ride in his goll-darned
wagon again."

"I sincerely hope you will not," replied Astoria, looking at me with the
most curious expression. "It would be much better to let me take you
wherever you wish to go."

"That's awfully kind of you," I said, "but I don't care to go anywhere
in particular this afternoon, except as far as possible from that
objectionable young man."

The Astorian did not speak again till he had turned something in the
machine to make it back and jerk, and, once free from the upset hay, go
on again.

"Say, Sissy, I thought you was comin' to take dinner," Pop called out
from under the wagon, where he had crawled for safety, and when I
replied as nicely as I could, "No, thank you, not to-day," he said
again, quite sadly as I thought, "Gosh blim me, if that don't beat the
cats!" and also several other things I could not hear because we were
moving away so rapidly.

When we had gone about a hundred miles--or yards, or inches, whichever
it was--the Astorian, who had been sitting very straight, inquired if
those gentlemen--meaning Pop and Jay--were near relatives.

I showed him plainly that I thought his question Uranian, and explained
that I had not a relative on Earth. Then I told him exactly how I had
come to be with them, and about my picnic and the egg. I am afraid I did
not take great pains to make the story very clear, for it was such fun
to perplex him. He is not at all like the Venus people, who have become
so superlatively clever that they are always bored to death.

"Were you surprised to see me flying through the air?" I asked.

"Oh, no," he said; "I have always thought of you as coming to Earth in
some such way from some far-distant planet."

"Oh, then, you know!" I gasped.

The Astorian laughed.

"I know you are the one perfect being in the world, and that is quite
enough," he said, and I saw at once that whatever he had guessed about
me he knew nothing at all of the Settlement.

"Miss Aura," he went on,--he has called me that ever since that little
embryonic made his stupid blunder, and I have not corrected him--here it
is almost necessary to have some sort of a name--"Miss Aura, don't you
think we have been mere acquaintances long enough? I'm only human--"

"Yes, of course," I interrupted, "but then that is not your fault--"

"I'm glad you look upon my misfortune so charitably," he said, a trifle
more puzzl