. I want to be on hand early to pick me out a girl."

"Yah," mocked the telegraph operator, bobbing his head through the
window, "you need to. They tell me every girl in Mount Mark has turned
you down a'ready."

But the Methodist minister, gazing away down the track where a thin
curl of smoke announced the coming of Number Nine, and Prudence,--heard
nothing of this conversation. He was not a handsome man. His hair was
gray at the temples, his face was earnest, only saved from severity by
the little clusters of lines at his eyes and mouth which proclaimed
that he laughed often, and with relish.

"Train going east!"

The minister stood back from the crowd, but when the train came
pounding in a brightness leaped into his eyes that entirely changed the
expression of his face. A slender girl stood in the vestibule, leaning
dangerously outward, and waving wildly at him a small gloved hand.
When the train stopped she leaped lightly from the steps, ignoring the
stool placed for her feet by the conductor.

"Father!" she cried excitedly and small and slight as she was, she
elbowed her way swiftly through the gaping crowd. "Oh, father!" And
she flung her arms about him joyously, unconscious of the admiring eyes
of the Adams Express man, and the telegraph operator, and old Harvey
Reel, whose eyes were always admiring when girls passed by. She did
not even observe that the Slaughterhouse Quartette looked at her
unanimously, with languid interest from out the wreaths of smoke they
had created.

Her father kissed her warmly. "Where is your baggage?" he asked, a
hand held out to relieve her.

"Here!" And with a radiant smile she thrust upon him a box of candy
and a gaudy-covered magazine.

"Your suit-case," he explained patiently.

"Oh!" she gasped. "Run, father, run! I left it on the train!"

Father did run, but Prudence, fleeter-footed, out-distanced him and
clambered on board, panting.

When she rejoined her father her face was flushed. "Oh, father," she
said quite snappily, "isn't that just like me?"

"Yes, very like," he agreed, and he smiled. "Where is your umbrella?"

Prudence stopped abruptly. "I don't know," she said, with a stony
face. "I can't remember a blessed thing about the old umbrella. Oh, I
guess I didn't bring it, at all." She breathed long in her relief.
"Yes, that's it, father, I left it at Aunt Grace's. Don't you worry
about it. Fairy'll bring it to-morrow. Isn't it nice that w