ouldn't think you'd want to do anything
of the kind."

"I'll keep my promise, an' I'll do whatever else I please. You better
not be too smart, 'cause I might back out of the trade."

"It would be a sorry job for you," Joe said, threateningly, and, turning
once more, he continued the journey without heed to Master Fernald's
movements.

[Illustration: "THE PRINCESS SUFFERED AUNT DORCAS TO KISS HER."]

It was not yet eleven o'clock when Joe and the princess arrived at aunt
Dorcas's home, and the little woman cried, in delight, as Master Potter
led the child towards her:

"What a sweet little darling! What a beautiful baby! Why, Joseph, I had
no idea she was such a lovely child as this!" and the princess suffered
aunt Dorcas to kiss her rapturously.

"There's no flies on her, anyhow," Joe said, with an air of pride.

It is doubtful if aunt Dorcas heard this last remark. She was as pleased
with the princess as a child would have been with a doll, and behaved
much after the same fashion.

Joe and Plums listened with greatest satisfaction to her words of
praise.

The little maid and the little woman had apparently conceived a most
violent admiration each for the other, and straightway it seemed as if
the boys were entirely forgotten, for the two went into the house
without so much as a backward glance.

"'Cordin' to the looks of things, I guess they'll get along pretty well
together," Plums said, in a tone of satisfaction. "I'm mighty glad
you've come back, 'cause aunt Dorcas kept me humpin' myself ever since
you left. Why, I've finished up the whole garden, an' it seems to me as
if I'd done the work of four men. Did you get the money from the German
woman?"

"Yes; but it didn't do me any good;" and then Joe told in detail of the
meeting with the amateur detective, and the bribe he had been forced to
give.

"It seems as though Dan must be pretty smart if they're advertisin' for
him, too," Plums said, reflectively. "I can't make out what them lawyers
are up to, offerin' a whole hundred dollars for either one of us, an'
when it comes right down to dots, I don't s'pose we're actually worth
twenty-five cents."

"I can't understand it, either, and I expect aunt Dorcas will think I'm
a terrible bad feller, when I tell her the story."

"But you ain't goin' to do anything like that?" Plums cried, in alarm.

"Yes, I am; I won't go away from here without tellin' her the truth, an'
I've got to leave before three o'clo