ooed sweetly at Jim as if he had
been Mr. Gregory, "What is it, Jim? What do you want me for?"

The boy answered with the disgust a sister's company manners always
rouse in a brother. "Motha wants you. Says she's wo'ked down, and she
wants you to come and help." Then he went his way.

Mrs. Atwell was used to having help snatched from her by their families
at a moment's notice. "I presume you've got to go, Clem," she said.

"Oh, yes, I've got to go," Clementina assented, with a note of relief
which mystified Mrs. Atwell.

"You tied readin' to Mr. Milray?"

"Oh, no'm-no, I mean. But I guess I betta go home. I guess I've been
away long enough."

"Well, you're a good gul, Clem. I presume your motha's got a right to
have you home if she wants you." Clementina said nothing to this, but
turned briskly, and started upstairs toward her room again. The landlady
called after her, "Shall you speak to Mis' Milray, or do you want I
should?"

Clementina looked back at her over her shoulder to warble, "Why, if you
would, Mrs. Atwell," and kept on to her room.

Mrs. Milray was not wholly sorry to have her go; she was going herself
very soon, and Clementina's earlier departure simplified the question
of getting rid of her; but she overwhelmed her with reproaches which
Clementina received with such sweet sincerity that another than Mrs.
Milray might have blamed herself for having abused her ingenuousness.

The Atwells could very well have let the girl walk home, but they sent
her in a buckboard, with one of the stablemen to drive her. The landlord
put her neat bundle under the seat of the buckboard with his own
hand. There was something in the child's bearing, her dignity and
her amiability, which made people offer her, half in fun, and half in
earnest, the deference paid to age and state.

She did not know whether Gregory would try to see her before she went.
She thought he must have known she was going, but since he neither came
to take leave of her, nor sent her any message, she decided that she had
not expected him to do so. About the third week of September she heard
that he had left Middlemount and gone back to college.

She kept at her work in the house and helped her mother, and looked
after the little ones; she followed her father in the woods, in his
quest of stuff for walking sticks, and advised with both concerning the
taste of summer folks in dress and in canes. The winter came, and she
read many books in its lon