"At least, she was not put out by our doing it," commented Mrs. McGregor, after her neighbor had gone. "I feared some she might be. But evidently she accepted the gift just as we meant it. So that's settled! Now if we could only find out where our own dinner came from and say as much to its giver, I'd be entirely content. I've taxed my brain until my head is fair aching and still I'm no nearer having an idea where that basket of ours came from than the man in the moon." "I guess you will just have to rate it as coming from the fairies," smiled her brother, "and let the matter rest there; that is, unless Hal Harling gets another inspiration." "Another inspiration! Sure the inspiration he had wasn't worth much," sniffed Mrs. McGregor. "Unless he can provide a better one than that I sha'n't be listening to him." "You may as well not be slandering him, for here he is now," Carl cried, jumping up to admit his chum whose footfall he had heard on the stairs. "I'm not slandering him," Mrs. McGregor continued, imperturbably greeting the visitor. "In fact, what I've said about him I'd as lief say to his face. I'm telling them, laddie," said she, turning brightly to Hal, "that I have scant opinion of you as a detective." The big fellow laughed good-humoredly. "They are not putting me on the Scotland Yard force yet, I must own," he admitted. "But how do you know that I won't track down Mr. X yet? Give me time. No great mystery can be solved all in a minute." "I've let you sleep on it and so far as I can see you are no better off this morning than you were last night," was the crisp retort. "I'm not, and that's the truth," Hal returned, pulling off his coat. "I'm simply going to bury the matter the way a dog buries a bone, and then some day I'll dig it up and go to work at it again." "I guess that's as good a scheme as any," Captain Dillingham declared. "Sometimes if you do not fuss at a riddle it solves itself. Come, sit down and talk to us while Nell gets her hair cut. It may help to keep her quiet." The child, seated on the table and muffled to her neck in her mother's apron, brightened. "Tell story," commanded she. "Hal tell story." "I? Not on your life!" protested the big fellow in consternation. "I never told a story in all my days. Your uncle Frederick will tell you one." "Uncle Frederick will do nothing of the sort," growled the captain, as he puffed contentedly at his pipe. "It's Hal who is going to tell the story. He is going to explain to us exactly what they do with the bales of cotton when they reach the mill." "That? Oh, I can tell you that, all right, for I see it done from morning to night, year in and year out. But I don't call that a story, do you?" "It will be a story to us, no matter what it is to you, for remember that although I have often loaded cotton and carried it hither and thither round the world I've never seen what became of it after we thumped it down on the dock."