o the muzzle.

We had a cup of tea in Tish's parlor, but she kept us out of the
bedroom, where we could hear Miss Swift running the sewing machine.
Finally Aggie said out of a clear sky:

"Have you had any answers to your advertisement?"

Tish, who had been about to put a slice of lemon in her tea, put it in
her mouth instead and stared at us both.

"What advertisement?"

"We know all about it, Tish," I said. "And if you think it proper for a
woman of your age to go adventuring with only a donkey for company----"

"I've had worse!" Tish snapped. "And I'm not feeble yet, as far as my
age goes. If I want to take a walking tour it's my affair, isn't it?"

"You can't walk with your bad knee," I objected. Tish sniffed.

"You're envious, that's what," she sneered. "While you are sitting at
home, overeating and oversleeping and getting fat in mind and body, I
shall be on the broad highway, walking between hedgerows of
flowering--flowering--well, between hedgerows. While you sleep in
stuffy, upholstered rooms I shall lie in woodland glades in my
sleeping-bag and see overhead the constellation of--of what's its name.
I shall talk to the birds and the birds will talk to me."

Sleeping-bag! That was what Aggie had meant that Miss Swift was making.

"What are you going to do when it rains?"

"It doesn't rain much in May. Anyhow, a friendly farmhouse and a glass
of milk--even a barn----"

Aggie got up with the light of desperation in her eyes. Aggie hates
woods and gnats, has no eye for Nature, and for almost half a century
has pampered her body in a featherbed poultice, with the windows closed,
until the first of June each year. Yet Aggie rose to the crisis.

"You shan't go alone, Tish," she said stoutly. "You'll forget to change
your stockings when your feet are wet and you can't make a cup of coffee
fit to drink. I'm going too."

Tish made a gesture of despair, but Aggie was determined. Tish glanced
at me.

"Well?" she snapped. "We might as well make it a family excursion.
Aren't you coming along, too, to look after Aggie?"

"Not at all," I observed calmly. "I'll have enough to do looking after
myself. But I like the idea, and since you've invited me I'll come, of
course."

At first I am afraid Tish was not particularly pleased. She said she had
it all planned to make four miles an hour, or about forty miles a day;
and that any one falling back would have to be left by the wayside. And
that if we were not pre