ife, opened the front door. She was
laughing. The next moment a small figure shot past her, down the steps,
and into the carriage like a red-hooded bombshell.

"Uncle Cyrus!" she screamed joyously. "Uncle Cyrus, it's me! Here I am!"

And Captain Cy, springing up and shedding wraps and robes, received the
bombshell with open arms and hugged it tight.

"Bos'n!" he shouted. "By the big dipper! BOS'N! Why, you
little--you--you--"

That was a wonderful ride. Emily sat in the captain's lap--he positively
refused to let her sit beside him on the seat, although Peabody urged
it, fearing the child might tire him--and her tongue rattled like a
sewing machine. She had a thousand things to tell, about her school,
about Georgianna, about her dolls, about Lonesome, the cat, and how many
mice he had caught, about the big snowstorm.

"Georgianna wanted me to stay at home and wait for you, Uncle Cy," she
said, "but I teased and teased and finally they said I could come over.
I came yesterday on the train. Mr. Tidditt went with me to the depot.
Mrs. Peabody let me peek into your room last night and I saw you eating
supper. You didn't know I was there, did you?"

"You bet I didn't! There'd have been a mutiny right then if I'd caught
sight of you. You little sculpin! Playin' it on your Uncle Cy, was you?
I didn't know you could keep a secret so well."

"Oh, yes I can! Why, I know an ever so much bigger secret, too. It
is--Why! I 'most forgot. You just wait."

The captain laughingly begged her to divulge the big secret, but she
shook her small head and refused. The horses trotted on at a lively
pace, and the miles separating Ostable and Bayport were subtracted one
by one. It was magnificent winter weather. The snow had disappeared from
the road, except in widely separated spots, but the big drifts still
heaped the fields and shone and sparkled in the sunshine. Against their
whiteness the pitch pines and cedars stood darkly green and the skeleton
scrub oaks and bushes cast delicate blue-penciled shadows. The bay,
seen over the flooded, frozen salt meadows and distant dunes, was in its
winter dress of the deepest sapphire, trimmed with whitecaps and fringed
with stranded ice cakes. There was a snap and tang in the breeze which
braced one like a tonic. The party in the carriage was a gay one.

"Getting tired, captain?" asked Peabody.

"Who? Me? Well, I guess not. 'Most home, Bos'n. There's the salt works
ahead there."

They passed