"That is Uncle Jabez;" admitted Ruth, hastening to put on her hat.
"He is an ugly one; isn't he? I'd like to know him, I would," declared the odd child. "He ain't one that's always smirking and smiling, I bet you!"
"He isn't given much to smiling, I must admit," laughed Ruth, stooping to kiss the crippled girl.
"There! Go along with you," said Mercy, sharply. "You tell that ugly, dusty man—Dusty Miller, that's what he is—that I'm coming out to the Red Mill, whether he wants me to or not."
And when Ruth got out upon the street Mercy had her window open and cried through the opening, shaking her little fist the while:
"Remember! You tell Dusty Miller what I told you! I'm coming out there."
"What's the matter with that young one?" growled Uncle Jabez, as Ruth climbed aboard and the mules started at a trot before she was really seated beside him.
Ruth told him, smiling, that Mercy had taken a fancy to his looks, and a fancy, too, to the Red Mill from her description of it. "She wants very much to come out there this summer—if she can be moved that far."
Then Ruth tried to thank the miller for the frock—which bundle she saw carefully placed among the other packages in the body of the wagon—but Uncle Jabez listened very grumpily to her broken words.
"I don't know how to thank you, sir; for of all the things I wanted most, I believe this is the very first thing," Ruth said, stumblingly. "I really don't know how to thank you."