chicken, and overjoyed at the sight of you!" Miss Georgie
rose just as enthusiastically as if she had not seen Evadna slip from
Huckleberry's back, fuddle the tie-rope into what looked like a knot,
and step lightly upon the platform. She had kept her head down--had Miss
Georgie--until the last possible second, because she was still being a
fool and had permitted a page of her book to fog before her eyes. There
was no fog when she pushed Evadna into the seat of honor, however, and
her mouth abetted her eyes in smiling.

"Everything at the ranch is perfectly horrid," Evadna complained
pathetically, leaning back in the rocking-chair. "I'd just as soon be
shut up in a graveyard. You can't IMAGINE what it's like, Georgie,
since those horrible men came and camped around all over the place! All
yesterday afternoon and till dark, mind you, the boys were down there
shooting at everything but the men, and they began to shoot back, and
Aunt Phoebe was afraid the boys would be hit, and so we all went down
and--oh, it was awful! If Grant hadn't come home and stopped them,
everybody would have been murdered. And you should have heard how they
swore at Grant afterward! They just called him everything they could
think of for making them stop. I had to sit around on the other side of
the house--and even then I couldn't help hearing most of it.

"And to-day it is worse, because they just go around like a lot
of dummies and won't do anything but look mean. Aunt Phoebe was so
cross--CROSS, mind you!--because I burnt the jam. And some of the
jumpers are missing, and nobody knows where they went--and Marie has got
the toothache worse than ever, and won't go and have it pulled because
it will HURT! I don't see how it can hurt much worse than it does
now--she just goes around with tears running down into the flannel
around her face till I could SHAKE her!" Evadna laughed--a self-pitying
laugh, and rocked her small person violently. "I wish I could have an
office and live in it and telegraph things to people," she sighed, and
laughed again most adorably at her own childishness. "But really and
truly, it's enough to drive a person CRAZY, down at the ranch!"

"For a girl with a brand-new sweetheart--" Miss Georgie reproved
quizzically, and reached for the inevitable candy box.

"A lot of good that does, when he's never there!" flashed Evadna,
unintentionally revealing her real grievance. "He just eats and
goes--and he isn't even there to eat,