it for granted Milly's
niece looks like any other girl--nose and mouth and hair and eyes,
you know. But I can't describe her to you in detail."

"No? Why?" Peter wondered.

"Because I have never laid eyes on her," said his uncle.

"Oh!" Peter looked thunderstruck.

"I came to you first," explained his uncle. "I gave you first whack.
Now I'm going to see her."

"Oh!" said Peter, still more thunderstruck.

"I'll wire you when you're to come," said his uncle, briskly, and
got into dust-coat, cap, and goggles. A few minutes later, before
the little town was well awake, he vanished in a cloud of dust down
the Riverton Road.

CHAPTER VII

WHERE THE ROAD DIVIDED

Emma Campbell stood in the middle of the kitchen floor, lips pursed,
eyes fixed on vacancy, a dish-cloth dangling from one hand, a
carving-knife clutched in the other, and projecked. And the more she
projecked about what was happening in Peter's house, the less she
liked it. It had never occurred to Emma Campbell that Peter might go
away from Riverton. Yet now he was going, and it had been taken for
granted that she, Emma, who, as she said, had "raised 'im from a
puppy up'ards," wouldn't mind staying on here after his departure.
Fetching a cold sigh from the depths of an afflicted bosom, Emma
moved snail-like toward the work in hand; and as she worked she
howled dismally that nobody knew the trouble she saw, "nobody knew
but you, Lawd."

When Peter came in to dinner, she addressed him with distant
politeness as Mistuh Champneys, instead of the usual Mist' Peter.
When he spoke to her she accordion-plaited her lips, and stuck her
eyes out at him. Her head, adorned with more than the usual quota of
toothpicks, brought the quills upon the fretful porcupine forcibly
to one's mind.

Nobody but Peter Champneys could or would have borne with Emma
Campbell's contrary fits, but as neither of them realized this they
managed to get along beautifully. Peter was well aware that when the
car that had suddenly appeared in the night had just as suddenly
disappeared in the morning in a cloud of dust on the Riverton Road,
Emma's peace of mind had vanished also. He understood, and was
patient.

She clapped a platter of crisp fried chicken before him, and stood
by, eyeing him and it grimly. And when hungry Peter thrust his fork
into a tempting piece, "You know who you eatin'?" she demanded
pleasantly.

Peter didn't know whom he was eating; fork suspended, he l