s Mr. Melrose!" he cried in a shrill voice.

"Better, are you, dear?" asked a voice at his side, and he twisted his
head, to see a woman, not yet middle-aged, with a kindly face which
matched her voice.

"Have I been bad?" he asked in a wondering tone, and then, suddenly
remembering, he called out anxiously: "Why, where are the others?"

"Who are the others, dear? You were lying alone on the road when we
found you; and when we first picked you up we thought that you were
dead," said the woman.

"Just my luck!" cried Rumple, with a groan. "I sat at the back of the
wagon--on the rack behind, you know--so that I might have some quiet,
because I was turning out a little poem. Then I remember that I got
sleepy, and I suppose that I fell off; only I wonder that it did not
wake me up."

"We think that you must have stunned yourself with the fall, and we
should have sent for a doctor, only he lives fifteen miles away, and we
had no horse that could do the journey just then, and we had to wait for
a few hours to see if you would be better," said the woman; and then she
asked again: "But who were you with, dear, and how was it they went on
and left you lying all alone in the road, you poor child?"

"Why, that was because they did not know that I had fallen off, of
course," said Rumple hastily, for there was so much reproach for the
rest of the family in her tone that he was instantly on the defensive on
their behalf.

"Then I expect that your mother will be in a fine state of mind about
you," said his hostess, who was fussing round him much after the fashion
in which a motherly hen would fuss round a brood of chickens.

Rumple hastily explained then that he had no mother, and detailed the
journeyings of his family, while the good woman stood with her hands
uplifted in horrified amazement to think that a lot of irresponsible
children should be left to wander about the world in such an unprotected
fashion.

"We are used to looking after ourselves, and Nealie is nearly grown up.
She does not have her hair hanging down her back now, because it makes
her look so much more responsible, now that she wears it in a bunch on
the top of her head," explained Rumple.

"And you say that you have one of Peek & Wallis's wagons? Why, they are
most dreadful particular sort of people, and they always want money down
and no end of security besides; no blame to them either, seeing how bad
some people are about paying their just debts," sa