g county, however, the stage
trip became a mere twelve-mile, cross-country transfer from one
railroad to another, and the stage made a later trip, allowing the
passengers plenty of time for "dinner" before they started. Day after
day, as the coach flashed by with its money-laden passengers, Uncle
Billy had hoped that it would break down. But this was better, much
better. The coach might be quickly mended, but not the flood.

"I'm a-goin' t' charge 'em till they squeal," he declared to the
timidly protesting Aunt Margaret, "an' then I'm goin' t' charge 'em a
least mite more, drat 'em!"

He retreated behind the rough wooden counter that did duty as a desk,
slammed open the flimsy, paper-bound "cash book" that served as a
register, and planted his elbows uncompromisingly on either side of
it.

"Let 'em bring in their own traps," he commented, and Aunt Margaret
fled, ashamed and conscience-smitten, to the kitchen. It seemed awful.

The first one out of the coach was the husband of the brunette matron,
and, proceeding under instructions, he waited neither for luggage nor
women folk, but hurried straight into the Tutt House. The other man
would have been neck and neck with him in the race, if it had not been
that he paused to seize two suitcases and had the misfortune to drop
one, which burst open and scattered a choice assortment of lingerie
from one end of the dingy coach to the other.

In the confusion of rescuing the fluffery, the owner of the suitcase
had to sacrifice her hauteur and help her husband and son block up the
aisle, while the other matron had the ineffable satisfaction of being
_kept waiting_, at last being enabled to say, sweetly and with the
most polite consideration:

"Will you kindly allow me to pass?"

The blonde matron raised up and swept her skirts back perfectly flat.
She was pale but collected. Her husband was pink but collected. Her
son was crimson and uncollected. The brunette daughter could not have
found an eye anywhere in his countenance as she rustled out after her
mother.

"I do hope that Belmont has been able to secure choice quarters," the
triumphing matron remarked as her daughter joined her on the ground.
"This place looked so very small that there can scarcely be more than
one comfortable suite in it."

It was a vital thrust. Only a splendidly cultivated self-control
prevented the blonde matron from retaliating upon the unfortunate who
had muddled things. Even so, her eyes spo