“Oh, is that so? And is it going to be hard to get acquainted with me?” asked the housekeeper curiously. “Oh, no!” cried Carolyn May, snuggling up to the good woman and patting her plump, bare arm. “Why, I’m getting ’quainted with _you_ fast, Aunty Rose! You heard me say my prayers, and when you laid me down on the couch just now you kissed me.” Aunty Rose actually blushed. “There, there, child!” she exclaimed. “You’re too noticing. Eat your dinner, that I’ve saved warm for you.” “Isn’t Prince to have any dinner, Aunty Rose?” asked the little girl. “You may let him out, if you wish, after you have had your own dinner. You can feed him under the tree. But stand by and keep the hens away, for hens haven’t any more morals than they have teeth, and they’ll steal from him. I don’t want him to snap any of their heads off before they’re ready for the pot.” “Oh, Aunty Rose,” said Carolyn May seriously, “he’s too polite. He wouldn’t do such a thing. Really, you don’t know yet what a _good_ dog Prince is.” Carolyn May was very much excited about an hour later when a rusty, closed hack drew up to the front gate of the Stagg place and stopped. She and Prince were then playing in the front yard—at least, she was stringing maple keys into a long, long chain (a delight heretofore unknown to the little city girl), and the dog was watching her with wrinkling nose and blinking eyes. An old man with a square-cut chin whisker and clothing and hat as rusty as the hack itself held the reins over the bony back of the horse that drew the ancient equipage. “I say, young’un, ain’t ye out o’ yer bailiwick?” queried Tim, the hackman, staring at the little girl in the Stagg yard. Carolyn May stood up quickly and tried to look over her shoulder and down her back. It _was_ hard to get all those buttons buttoned straight. “I don’t know,” she said, perturbed. “Does it show?” “Huh?” grunted Tim. “Does what show?” “What you said,” said Carolyn May accusingly. “I don’t believe it does.” “Hey!” chuckled the hack driver suddenly. “I meant, do you ’low Mrs. Kennedy knows you’re playing in her front yard?” “Aunty Rose? Why, of course!” Carolyn May declared. “Don’t you know I _live_ here?” “Live here? Get out!” exclaimed the surprised hackman. “Yes, sir. And Prince, too. With my Uncle Joe and Aunty Rose.” “Pitcher of George Washington!” ejaculated Tim. “You don’t mean Joe Stagg’s taken a young-’un to board?” “He’s my guardian,” said the little girl primly. “‘Guardian’?” repeated the hackman, puzzled. “You don’t mean you’re one o’ them fresh-airs, be ye?” Carolyn May was quite as much puzzled by that expression as she had been by “bailiwick.” She shook her head. “I don’t think I am,” she confessed. “Mrs. Price said I was an orphan. Is that anything like a fresh-air?” “Most of them is,” the hackman said sententiously. “But here’s Mrs. Kennedy.”