o tell you."

"What is it?" asked Miss Salome good-humouredly, turning to him with
her spoon poised in midair over her granite saucepan.

"It's about myself. I--I--oh, Miss Salome, I didn't tell you the
truth about myself. I've got to tell it now. My name isn't
Benson--exactly--and I ran away from home."

"Dear me!" said Miss Salome mildly. She dropped her spoon, handle and
all, into the taffy and never noticed it. "Dear me, Chester!"

"I knew it," said Clemantiny triumphantly. "I knew it--and I always
said it. Run away, did you?"

"Yes'm. My name is Chester Benson Stephens, and I lived at Upton with
Aunt Harriet Elwell. But she ain't any relation to me, really. She's
only father's stepsister. She--she--wasn't kind to me and she wouldn't
let me go to school--so I ran away."

"But, dear me, Chester, didn't you know that was very wrong?" said
Miss Salome in bewilderment.

"No'm--I didn't know it then. I've been thinking lately that maybe it
was. I'm--I'm real sorry."

"What did you say your real name was?" demanded Clemantiny.

"Stephens, ma'am."

"And your mother's name before she was married?"

"Mary Morrow," said Chester, wondering what upon earth Clemantiny
meant.

Clemantiny turned to Miss Salome with an air of surrendering a dearly
cherished opinion.

"Well, ma'am, I guess you must be right about his looking like Johnny.
I must say I never could see the resemblance, but it may well be
there, for he--that very fellow there--and Johnny are first cousins.
Their mothers were sisters!"

"Clemantiny!" exclaimed Miss Salome.

"You may well say 'Clemantiny.' Such a coincidence! It doesn't make
you and him any relation, of course--the cousinship is on the mother's
side. But it's there. Mary Morrow was born and brought up in Hopedale.
She went to Upton when I did, and married Oliver Stephens there. Why,
I knew his father as well as I know you."

"This is wonderful," said Miss Salome. Then she added sorrowfully,
"But it doesn't make your running away right, Chester."

"Tell us all about it," demanded Clemantiny, sitting down on the
wood-box. "Sit down, boy, sit down--don't stand there looking as if
you were on trial for your life. Tell us all about it."

Thus adjured, Chester sat down and told them all about it--his
moonlight flitting and his adventures in Montrose. Miss Salome
exclaimed with horror over the fact of his sleeping in a pile of
lumber for seven nights, but Clemantiny listened in silence, n