e and the Old Squire were
gone.

Aunt Nabbie was grandmother's sister, and she and Uncle Mowbray had been
talking all that season of coming to visit us. But September had been
spoken of as the time they were coming.

They changed their minds, however. Uncle Pascal desired to look after
some business venture of his in Portland, and decided to come in August.
It was a somewhat sudden change of plan, but they sent us a letter the
day before they started, thinking that we would get it and meet them at
the railway station.

Now, all dear city cousins, aunts, uncles and the rest of you who visit
your country relatives, summer or winter, hear me! Do not hold back your
letter telling them you are coming till the day before you start.

Nine times out of ten they will not get it. You will get there before
the letter does; and the chances are that you will have to provide your
own transportation for the six or ten miles from the railway station to
the farm, and you will think that distance longer than all the rest of
the journey.

Most likely, too, you will find the farmer gone to a Grange meeting; and
by the time you have sat round the farmhouse door on your trunk till he
gets back at sunset, you will be homesick, and maybe hungry.

Also--for there are two sides to the matter--your country brother and
his wife will be troubled about it. So send your letter at least a week
ahead.

The first we knew of the coming of Uncle Pascal and Aunt Nabbie, they
drove into the yard with a livery team from the village, and an express
wagon coming on behind with their trunks.

Besides Uncle and Aunt, there was a smiling, dark-haired youth with
them, a grand-nephew of Uncle Mowbray, named Olin Randall, whom we had
heard of often as a kind of third or fourth cousin, but had never seen.
He had never beheld Maine before, and was regarding everything with
curiosity and a little grin of condescension.

That grin of his nearly upset us, particularly Ellen and "Doad," who for
a hundred reasons wished to make a very favorable impression on Uncle
and Aunt Mowbray and all the family. I nearly forgot to mention that
Uncle Mowbray was reputed very fussy and particular about his food.

Our two-story farmhouse was comfortable and big, and we had plenty of
everything; but of course it was not altogether like one of the finest
houses in Philadelphia. For Uncle Mowbray was a wealthy man, one of
those thrifty, prosperous Philadelphia merchants of the e