ess hard at making
cement-mixers; so much had been printed in books about this reaching out
of youth that he might repeat now, if he knew it all, to the little
mother. Instead he found himself telling her of his own three nieces.
Then quite casually Mrs. Travis remarked:

"Some very pleasant people have opened Cobble House over on Cobble
Mountain--Mr. and Mrs. Will Allan. I met her at church. She's--well, I
knew in an instant that I was going to like her and that she'd help me
about Jerry. I----"

"Allan--Will Allan? Why, bless my soul, that's Penelope Everett, the
finest woman I ever knew! They come from my town." He sprang to his feet
in delight. "I never dreamed I was anywhere near them! I'll get Mr.
Chubb to take me there to-morrow. Of _course_ you'll like her.
She's--well, she's just like _you_!"

CHAPTER III

ON THE ROAD TO COBBLE

The next day Mr. Toby Chubb's "Fly-by-day," as Dr. Travis called the one
automobile that Miller's Notch boasted, chugged busily over the mountain
roads. John Westley started out very early to find his friends at
Cobble; then he had to drive back to Wayside to appease a distraught
manager and half a dozen angry guides and also to pack his belongings;
for the Allans would not let him stay anywhere else but with them at
Cobble. Then, after he had been comfortably established in the freshly
painted and papered guest-room of the old stone house which the Allans
had been remodeling, he coaxed Mrs. Allan to drive back to Sunnyside
that she might, before the day passed, get better acquainted with Jerry
and Jerry's mother.

"I couldn't feel more excited if I'd found a gold mine there on the side
of Kettle!" John Westley had told his friends. Mrs. Allan, an attractive
young woman, who was accustomed to many congenial friends about her, had
been wondering, deep in her heart, if she was not going to find Cobble
just the least little bit lonely at times, so she listened with deep
interest to John Westley's account of Jerry and Sunnyside.

"I can't just describe why the girl seems so different--it's that she's
so confoundedly natural! There's a freshness about her that's like one
of these clean, cool mountain winds whipping through you."

Mrs. Allan laughed at his awkward attempt to explain Jerry. She was used
to girls--she loved them, she understood just what he was trying to say.
He went on: "And here she is growing up, tucked away on the side of that
mountain with a mother who's