I do! I do!" said Orah, and burst out crying.
Crying?--roaring!--so the man said who heard it.

This was a charcoal man who happened along just then, driving an empty
charcoal cart. He kindly asked them where they lived, and whither they
were going. After Obed had told him, he said to them, "You poor little
children! You are dirty and ragged, and you are a long way from your
aunt Debby's. I shall pass near your father's house, and would you like
to take a ride with me?" Then, as they seemed willing, he helped them
into his cart, dropping them at the bottom as the safest place. Obed,
however, by putting his toes into knot-holes and cracks, climbed high
enough to put his head over the top, and Orah found a loose board which
she could shove aside, and so push her head through and look up at Obed.

[Illustration]

Now as they were rattling down a steep hill not a great way from home, a
slender young lady started from the sidewalk, and ran after them,
shouting and waving her parasol in the most frantic manner. The charcoal
man did not hear her. This frantic and slender young lady was the young
lady who made for Mr. St. Clair the smoking-cap done in the Persian
pattern slightly mingled with the Greek, and embroidered with the shaded
worsteds before mentioned, mingled with stitches of silk and beads of
silver.

It is not strange that upon seeing that smoking-cap, which had cost her
so much time and labor and money, appearing over the top of a charcoal
cart on the head of a sooty little boy--it is not strange, I say, that
the slender young lady went to Mr. St. Clair and asked what it all
meant. She found Mr. St. Clair sitting upon the door-step, watching the
sunset sky. Mr. St. Clair declared that he had spent the whole day in
looking for the smoking-cap, and that it must have been stolen. Mr. and
Mrs. Stimpcett came out, and said _they_ had been looking for the cap
all day, and had felt badly on account of its loss. At this moment,
grandma, who was confined to her room with rheumatism, called down from
a chamber window that there were two little beggar children coming round
the barn--colored children, she thought.

"Why," cried the slender young lady, "that's the very boy!"

Mr. St. Clair rushed out to the barn. Just as he left the door-step who
should drive up to the gate and come in but Mrs. Polly Slater. "I have
been to the mill," said she, "and I came home by this road, thinking you
would like to hear from Debby."