"Well then, I'll let you know she isn't," snapped Miss Dover. "Wilful indeed!" and seating herself with resentful suddenness she glared at him till he was glad to bury himself in his books, and try to forget the excitements of the morning in figures.
CHAPTER V.
AMONG THE COTTAGES.
Joyce, laughing to herself, tripped across the ground occupied by the works, and, after a hurried glance along the first row of cottages, selected one at random and making straight for it, knocked with some trepidation, but no delay. She heard herself announced inside by a childish voice in descriptive fashion—"Say, ma, it's a girl in swell clothes—hurry!" and began to question if she were too well dressed, even in her plain black garb, for her part. Certainly there was an air about her not common to the traveling agency people, but whether it were entirely due to her garments may be doubted.
After considerable scurrying about inside, plainly distinguished through the thin planking, the door was gingerly opened a few inches and a touzled head appeared in the slit.
"Good-morning, 'm," spoke the head with an inquiring accent, which plainly meant, "And what do you want?"
Joyce partly ignored the woman and her brusquerie, for the pretty curly pate of a baby clinging to her skirts, and her ready smile was for him, as she said,
"What a bright-eyed baby! May I come in for a minute and talk to you?"
The mother thawed to that, and the door fell wide apart. "Why, yes, come in, come in! I'm washing to-day, but there's no great hurry's I knows on. Sit there, won't ye? It's more comfor'ble."