"You've asked eight, so far," he said, as she was departing for the office an hour or so after dinner was finished, "but do you think that's all?"
"Oh, it positively must be!" Sidney said virtuously, but there was a wicked gleam in her eye that prepared him for her sudden descent upon the office two days later, with the startling news that now she had positively STOPPED, but fourteen children had been asked!
Barry, rather to her surprise, remained calm.
"Well, I've got an idea," he said presently, "that will make that all right, fourteen children or twenty, it won't make any difference. Only, it may not appeal to you."
"Oh, it will—and you are an angel!" said the lady fervently.
"I've got a friend up the country here in a lumber-mill," Barry explained, "Joe Painter—he hauls logs down from the forest to the river, with a team of eight oxen. Now, if he'd lend them, and you got a hay-wagon from Old Paloma, you wouldn't have any trouble at all."
"Oh, but Barry," she gasped, her face radiant, "would he lend them?"
"I think he would; he'd have to come too, you know, and drive them. I'll ride up and see, anyway."
"Oxen," mused Mrs. Burgoyne, "how perfectly glorious! The children will go wild with joy. And, you see, my Indian boys—"
"Your WHAT?"