ch trouble for him to
call here some time to-morrow afternoon, or the day after? I want him to
give me an interview if he will. Tell him, please, he will very greatly
oblige us."

"Oh, he'll come all right," answered her companion, quickly. "I'll
take Tibbs's buggy and go down there right off. Eph won't lose no time
gittin' _here_!" And with this encouraging assurance he was flying
forth, when he, like the others, was detained by her solicitous care.
She was a born mother. He protested that in the buggy he would be
perfectly sheltered; besides, there wasn't another umbrella about the
place; he _liked_ to get wet, anyway; had always loved rain. The end
of it was that he went away in a sort of tremor, wearing her rain-cloak
over his shoulders, which garment, as it covered its owner completely
when she wore it, hung almost to his knees. He darted around a corner;
and there, breathing deeply, tenderly removed it; then, borrowing paper
and cord at a neighboring store, wrapped it neatly, and stole back to
the printing-office on the ground floor of the "Herald" building, and
left the package in charge of Bud Tipworthy, mysteriously charging him
to care for it as for his own life, and not to open it, but if the lady
so much as set one foot out of doors before his return, to hand it to
her with the message: "He borrowed another off J. Hankins."

Left alone, the lady went to the desk and stood for a time looking
gravely at Harkless's chair. She touched it gently, as she had touched
it once before that morning, and then she spoke to it as if he were
sitting there, and as she would not have spoken, had he been sitting
there.

"You didn't want gratitude, did you?" she whispered, with sad lips.

Soon she smiled at the blue ribbons, patted the chair gaily on the back,
and, seizing upon pencil and pad, dashed into her work with rare energy.
She bent low over the desk, her pencil moving rapidly, and, except for
a momentary interruption from Mr. Tipworthy, she seemed not to pause for
breath; certainly her pencil did not. She had covered many sheets when
her father returned; and, as he came in softly, not to disturb her, she
was so deeply engrossed she did not hear him; nor did she look up when
Parker entered, but pursued the formulation of her fast-flying ideas
with the same single purpose and abandon; so the two men sat and waited
while their chieftainess wrote absorbedly. At last she glanced up and
made a little startled exclamatio