"Yes; but--if yer'll take it from me,"--interrupted
Larson,--"you'll be wise if ye keep still before the boy. It's no
use ASKIN' him anythin'. We've proved that fast enough. An' if he
once turns 'round an' begins ter ask YOU questions, yer done
for!"

"I guess you're right," nodded Higgins, with a quizzical smile.
"And as long as questioning CAN'T do any good, why, we'll just
keep whist before the boy. Meanwhile I wish the little rascal
would hurry up and get here. I want to see the inside of that
letter to HIM. I'm relying on that being some help to unsnarl
this tangle of telling who they are."

"Well, he's started," reiterated Mrs. Holly, as she turned back
into the house; "so I guess he'll get here if you wait long
enough."

"Oh, yes, he'll get here if we wait long enough," echoed Simeon
Holly again, crustily.

The two men in the wagon settled themselves more comfortably in
their seats, and Perry Larson, after a half-uneasy,
half-apologetic glance at his employer, dropped himself onto the
bottom step. Simeon Holly had already sat down stiffly in one of
the porch chairs. Simeon Holly never "dropped himself" anywhere.
Indeed, according to Perry Larson, if there were a hard way to do
a thing, Simeon Holly found it--and did it. The fact that, this
morning, he had allowed, and was still allowing, the sacred
routine of the day's work to be thus interrupted, for nothing
more important than the expected arrival of a strolling urchin,