"I quit learnin' when I was twelve." There was an unconscious note of wistfulness in her tones. "I kin read an' do a little figgerin', but I don't know much of anythin' else. I couldn't go to school an' begin again where I left off, Jim; I'd be sort of ashamed. Oh, look at that big wagon drivin' out of that gate! Maybe we'll git a lift." She had turned at the creak of wheels, and now, as the cart loaded with crates and pulled by two lean, sorry-looking horses passed, she gazed expectantly at the driver. He was as lean as his team, with a sharp nose and a tuft of gray hair sticking out from his chin, and his close-set eyes straight ahead of him, as though he were determined not to see to the two wayfarers. "He looks kinder mean, don't he?" Lou remarked. Then impulsively she ran after the wagon: "Say, mister, will you give us a lift?" The old man pulled in his horses and regarded her sourly. "What'll you pay?" he demanded. "What's in them crates," she parried. "Eggs." The response was laconic. "What you gittin' at, sis?" "Who unloads them when you git to where you're goin'?" Lou persisted. "At the Riverburgh dock? I do, unless I'm late, an' then I have to give a couple o' them loafers around there a quarter apiece to help. I'm late to-day, an' if you ain't got any money to ride--Giddap!" But Lou halted him determinedly. "If you'll give me and Jim--I mean my brother--a ride, he'll unload the crates for you for nothin' when we git there. You'll be savin' fifty cents, and the ride won't cost you nothin'." "Well"--the old man considered for a moment--"I'll do it, if it's only to spite them fellers that's allus hangin' 'round the docks. Reg'lar robbers, they be. Quarter apiece, an' chicken-feed gone up the way't is. Git in." Jim had overtaken the wagon in time to hear the end of the brief conversation, and he wasted no further time in parley, but hoisted Lou up over the wheel and climbed in beside her. As the reluctant horses started off once more the driver turned to him: "Hope you're a hustler, young man; got to git them eggs off the wagon in a jiffy when we git to Riverburgh, in time to ketch the boat. Don't you try no scuttlin' off on me after I give you the ride; Riverburgh's a reg'lar city, an' they's a policeman on the docks." "I'll keep the bargain my sister made for me," Jim answered shortly. He had observed the poultry-farm from which the old man had started, with its miserable little hovel of a house and immense spread of chicken-runs, and drawn his own conclusions as to the character of its owner. "You needn't be afraid I'll shirk." "Well," grumbled the other, "I don't hold with pickin' up tramps in the road, but I'm sick of handin' out good money to them loafers at the dock to unload, an' I ain't got a hired man to take along no more; they're allus lazy, good-for-nothin' fellers that eat more'n they work out, let alone their wages goin' sky-hootin'!"