post office
works so poor, and pa ain't no hand at it, anyhow. He said it sounded
like false teeth. So you pa wants you to come right home to Kilo. Mebby
he's dying."

"Dying!" cried Miss Sally, as white as a sheet.

"Yes, mebby he is," continued the boy. "He ain't right sure, but he says
you'd better come right home, so if he IS dying you'll be on hand. And,
if he ain't, you can help him hunt for them. He says he went to bed last
night, same as always, but he don't recall whether he took out his false
set of teeth or left them in, and he ain't sure whether he swallowed
them last night, or put them down somewheres and lost them. He says he's
got a pain like he swallowed them, but he ain't sure but what it's some
of the cooking he's been doing that give him that, and anyway he wants
you to come right home."

"Goodness sakes!" exclaimed Miss Sally, "why don't he go see Doc
Weaver?"

The boy shook his head.

"I don't know," he said. "I guess pa didn't think to ask him that. I'll
have to ask him when I git back."

The departure of Miss Sally made a break in the orderly progress of the
picnic, for it not only terminated her part of the day's pleasures, but
also cut short her visit in Clarence, and she had to say farewell to all
the picnickers before she could go.

Eliph' Hewlitt offered to drive her to Clarence, but she refused him,
and arranged to have one of the young boys, who had a faster horse,
drive her to Kilo. The whole picnic leaned over the rail fence and
watched until she was out of sight, and then went on with the lunch,
which was just ready when her summons came.

It was a severe blow to Eliph' Hewlitt. He had hoped to have carried his
courtship so far during the day that it would have been at least to
the third paragraph of the first page of "Courtship--How to Win the
Affections," and now Miss Sally had left, and he had not progressed at
all. It reminded him of the quotation in the Alphabet of Quotations, in
Jarby's Encyclopedia, "The Course of True Love Never Did Run Smooth."

Miss Sally's departure, however, and the strange circumstance of it,
allowed him to ask questions about her and about Kilo that he could not
otherwise have asked. He learned how far she would have to travel to
reach Kilo, who her father was, and all that he wished to know. He
decided that the only course for him to follow was to omit his canvass
of the interlying farms and of the town of Clarence for the present, and
follow