rchie Howard's, and was coming home through Oregon Avenue,--you
know how shady it is up there,--and just along by the Woodruffs' Uncle
David whirled past me. I guess I was looking so hard to make sure it
was he that I didn't notice the lady much, but it wasn't a man."

"Was that all? That doesn't mean anything! Maybe he just happened to
pick her up on her way home. He knows 'most everybody."

"No, he didn't! If he did, he picked her up again two nights
afterward, for I was down on Curtis Street, and just before I got to
the avenue there they were! They were going like lightning, and I
couldn't make out any more than I could before. The lady was on the
other side of Uncle David; but I'm sure it was the same one."

"But couldn't he take a lady to ride without marrying her?" asked
Polly slowly.

"Why, I suppose some men do," answered David; "but mamma says when a
man of his age--who hasn't been round with the ladies for years and
years--takes one out evening after evening, it isn't for nothing. And
mamma says, of course, when he brings a wife home we can't stay. Oh, I
don't know what we shall do! I thought we should live here with Uncle
David always. It is making mamma just sick. I know she keeps thinking
of those dreadful years before he made up, and if we've got to go back
to them again!"

"I wouldn't worry," soothed Polly. "Maybe it isn't anything at all. I
don't b'lieve he'll get married. If he'd been going to, he'd have done
it before he got so old."

"He isn't very old. He's only a little over fifty."

"That's old to get married, isn't it?"

"Oh, I don't know!" replied David absently.

"Well, I shall be married before I'm fifty," announced Polly
decidedly.

David laughed.

"Who you going to marry?" he chuckled.

"Why, of course I don't know yet," she responded; "but I shan't wait
till I'm fifty years old."

"No, I guess you won't," he agreed.

The sound of light hoofs speeding down the street turned the attention
from the weighty subject of marriage back to the Colonel himself.

"That isn't he, it's a little man," observed Polly.

"I knew it wasn't Lone Star's step," David replied. "Besides, he
doesn't come home so early as this."

"Oh, say," Polly broke out in an undertone of excitement, "let's go up
on Oregon Avenue! Maybe we should meet them!"

"I don't suppose they always go that way," mused David; "but it
wouldn't do any harm to take a walk--"

"No, come on!" urged Polly, jumping up. "Bu