icnicked in the sun, with the furniture wagon to break the
keen wind, passing around hot coffee in a can, from hand to hand, the
driver having built a campfire to heat the coffee beside the country
road.

But after that stop--for they were well into the country now--there was
no keeping Sister on the wagon-seat. She had learned to drop down and
mount again as lively as a cricket.

She tore along the edge of the road, with her hair flying, and her hat
hanging by its ribbons. She chased a rabbit, and squirrels, and picked
certain green branches, and managed to get her hands and the front of
her dress all "stuck up" with spruce gum in trying to get a piece big
enough to chew.

"Drat the young'un!" exclaimed Mother Atterson. "I can see plainly
I'd never ought to brought her, but should have sent her back to the
institution. She'll be as wild as Mr. March's hare--whoever he was--out
here in the country."

But Old Lem Camp gave her no trouble. He effaced himself just as he had
at the boarding house supper table. He seldom spoke--never unless he was
spoken to; and he lay up under the roof of the furniture wagon, whether
asleep, or no, Mrs. Atterson could not tell.

"He's as odd as Dick's hat-band," the ex-boarding house mistress
confided to the driver. "But, bless you! the easiest critter to get
along with--you never saw his beat. If I'd a house full of Lem Camps to
cook for, I'd think I was next door to heaven."

It was dusk when they arrived in sight of the little house beside the
road in which Uncle Jeptha Atterson had lived out his long life. Hiram
had a good fire going in both the kitchen and sitting room, and the
lamplight flung through the windows made the place look cheerful indeed
to the travelers.

"My soul and body!" croaked the good lady, when she got down from the
wagon and Hiram caught her in his arms to save her from a fall. "I'm as
stiff as a poker--and that's a fact. But I'm glad to get here."

Hiram's amazement when he saw Sister and Old Lem Camp was only expressed
in his look. He said nothing. The driver of the wagon backed it to the
porch step and then took out his team and, with Hiram's help, led them
to the stable, fed them, and bedded them down for the night. He was to
sleep in one of the spare beds and go back to town the following day.

Mother Atterson took off her best dress, slipped into a familiar old
gingham and bustled around the kitchen as naturally as though she had
been there all her