aking a disturbance."

It was necessary aunt Dorcas should remain where she was until the
driver had opened the carriage door. By that time Plums's friends had
gathered around the vehicle, gazing with open-mouthed astonishment at
Joe, who was clad in a new suit of clothes, and looked quite like a
little gentleman.

Aunt Dorcas was actually trembling as she descended from the carriage,
Joe assisting her in the same manner he had seen Mr. Raymond, and the
cheers which greeted her did not tend to make the little woman any more
comfortable in mind.

The princess's father would have sent his carriage the entire distance
but for the fact that aunt Dorcas preferred to arrive at her home in
such a conveyance as could be hired in Weehawken.

"It is more suitable," she had said. "While I enjoyed every inch of the
ride this morning, I could not help feeling as if we were wearing
altogether too fine feathers for working people."

Plums's friends insisted on crossing the ferry with him, and during the
passage aunt Dorcas was presented to each in turn, a proceeding which
entirely allayed her fears lest they would create an "unseemly
disturbance."

"I know I should come to like every one of them," she whispered to Joe,
"and before we go ashore you must invite them out to the cottage for a
whole day."

"They'd scare the neighbours, aunt Dorcas," Joe said, with a laugh, and
the little woman replied, quite sharply:

"Mr. McArthur is the only one who would hear the noise, and if I have
not complained because his dogs howled around the cottage night after
night these twenty years, I guess he can stand the strain one day."

Joe repeated aunt Dorcas's invitation while the boat was entering the
slip, and when the little woman went on shore, the cheers which came
from twenty pairs of stout lungs drowned all other sounds.

"Walk quickly, boys," she said, forced to speak very loud, because of
the tumult. "Your friends mean well, I have no doubt; but they are
making a perfect spectacle of us."

It was not possible for the little woman to walk so rapidly but that she
heard distinctly, when at some distance from the ferry-slip, Jerry
Hayes's shrill voice, as he cried:

"Now, fellers, give her three more, an' a tiger for the princess an' Joe
Potter!"

[Illustration]

End of Project Gutenberg's The Princess and Joe Potter, by James Otis

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