"You--you're goin' to let me ask you to ride, aren't you? You bought all
the food in Riverburgh, you know."

"And you seem to have financed all the rest of the trip," he said with a
rueful laugh. "I thought, when you suggested that we should travel
together, I would be the one to take care of you, but it has been the
other way around. Oh, Lou, I've so much to say to you when we reach our
journey's end!"

They arrived at Pelton before dark and found Mrs. Tooker's friend, who
ran a small boarding-house for store employees, and was glad to take
them in at a dollar a head. Lou disappeared after supper, and although
Lou waited long for him on the little porch, he did not return until
through sheer fatigue she was forced to go to bed.

In the morning, however, when they met before breakfast in the lower
hall he jingled a handful of silver in his pocket.

"However did you git it?" she demanded.

"Garage," he responded succinctly. "Didn't know I was a chauffeur, did
you, Lou?"

A peculiar little smile hovered for a moment about her lips, but she
merely remarked:

"I thought you wouldn't only take a quarter----"

"For each job," he interrupted her. "A lot of cars came in that needed
tinkering with after the storm, and they were short of hands. I made
more than two dollars, and we'll ride in state into Hunnikers!"

Lou made no reply, but after breakfast she drew him out on the little
porch.

"Jim, I--I'm not goin' on."

"What!" he exclaimed.

"The woman that runs this place, she--she wants a girl to help her, an'
I guess I'll stay." Lou's tones were none too steady, and she did not
meet his eyes. "I--I don't believe I'd like New York."

"You, a servant here?" He took one of her hands very gently in his. "I
didn't mean to tell you until we were nearly there, and as it is, there
is a lot that I can't tell you even now, but this much I want you to
know. You're not going to work any more, Lou. You're going to a lovely
old lady who lives in a big house all by herself, and there you are
going to study and play until you are really grown up, and know as much
as anybody."

She smiled and shook her head.

"This is the sort of place for me, Jim. I wasn't meant for anythin'
else, an' if I should live to be a hundred I could never know as much as
that lady at the circus who called you 'Jimmie Abbott.'"

"What--" Jim exploded for the second time.

"At least, she said you looked like him, and if she didn't know you were