Aunty Rose appeared. She wore a close bonnet, trimmed very plainly, and carried a parasol of drab silk. Otherwise, she had not changed her usual attire, save to remove the voluminous apron she wore when at her housework. “I would take you with me, child,” she said, looking at Carolyn May, “only I don’t know what to do with that dog. I suppose he would tear the house down if we shut him in?” “I expect so,” admitted the little girl. “And if he was outside, he would follow the hack?” “Yes, ma’am,” agreed Carolyn May again. “Then you’ll have to stay at home and watch him,” said Aunty Rose decisively. “I always claimed a dog was a nuisance.” Between Uncle Joe and Aunty Rose, both of the visitors at the Stagg place were proving to be nuisances. Aunty Rose climbed into the creaky old vehicle. “Are you going to be gone long?” asked Carolyn May politely. “Not more than two hours, child,” said the housekeeper. “Nobody will bother you here——” “Not while that dog’s with her, I reckon,” put in Tim, the hackman. “May I come down the road to meet you, Aunty Rose?” asked the little girl. “I know the way to Uncle Joe’s store.” “I don’t know any reason why you can’t come to meet me,” replied Mrs. Kennedy. “Anyway, you can come along the road as far as the first house. You know that one?” “Yes, ma’am. Mr. Parlow’s,” said Carolyn May. “She knows her way ’round, I warrant,” put in Tim. “Very well, child,” said Aunty Rose, and the bony old horse started slowly down the dusty road. Carolyn May stood at the gate and watched it wabble away. The hush of the afternoon wrapped the place about. Such a stir as there had been about The Corners in the forenoon seemed to have been quite quenched. Not even the clank of iron on iron from the blacksmith shop was now audible. Carolyn May went back into the yard and sat on the front-porch steps, and Prince, yawning unhappily, curled down at her feet. There did not seem to be much to do at this place. The little girl lost interest in the maple-key chain which Aunty Rose had shown her how to make. She had time now, had Carolyn May, to compare The Corners with the busy Harlem streets with which she had been familiar all her life. At this time of the afternoon the shady sides of the cross streets and the west side of the avenues were a-bustle with baby carriages and children, with nurses and mothers. And there were street pianos, and penny peep shows, and ice-cream-cone peddlers, and wagons, and many automobiles. “Goodness me!” thought Carolyn May, startled by her own imagination, “suppose all the folks in all these houses around here were _dead_!” They might have been, for all the human noises she heard. She could count seven dwellings from where she sat on the Stagg porch, and there were others not in sight. No apparent life at the blacksmith shop; none at the store. Not even a vehicle on the road, now that the hack had crawled out of view towards Sunrise Cove.