Carolyn was kept busy nodding to people on the way, or calling out greetings to them. Mrs. Maine, the dressmaker, peered near-sightedly through her blinds as they drove by, and Carolyn could imagine the woman biting off her threads and her words together, as she commented on the arrival of the little girl and her mother. A few steps beyond the dressmaker's was Jedidiah Parlow's carpenter shop. And here Tim, the hackman, positively had to stop, for the carpenter was Mrs. Amanda Stagg's father and one of Carolyn's very closest friends. "I declare, Hannah!" Mr. Parlow said, warmly shaking the hand of the woman he had known as a girl, "you'd be a sight for sore eyes in any case. But you air twice welcome, comin' as you do with Car'lyn. Car'lyn May jest about owns us, up along this road, and no two ways about it!" Carolyn kissed his wrinkled cheek warmly. "I hope you've got lots of nice long, curly shavings for me and Prince, Mr. Parlow," said the little girl. "I'm going to bring Freda Payne, too, and we'll play in your shavings--if you please." "You shall have 'em," replied the old carpenter, his eyes twinkling. "If there ain't enough I'll shave up a hull spruce board for ye." As Tim, the hackman, drove on Mrs. Cameron mentioned to her brother the change she observed in Mr. Jedidiah Parlow. "And it's no 'leventh hour conversion, Hannah, that your Car'lyn brought about in his case--believe me!" said Mr. Stagg energetically. "He's a vigorous old man yet. He's taken in a worthy woman and her son to do for him, and keeps on about his work just as he used when Mandy was with him. Only a sight more pleasant and neighbourly. Mandy says her father's taken a new lease on life." Prince was growing more restive as they approached the little hamlet of the Corners. He was out and in the hack half a dozen times, and finally, when Hiram Lardner's blacksmith shop and the store and the church and parsonage came into view, the dog ran barking ahead, displaying the fact that he recognized the locality. When Tim's hack stopped before the Stagg homestead they heard a great commotion among the poultry in the rear--the cackling of hens, quacking of ducks, the honking of the big gander, the squawking of guinea fowl, and over all the "Gobble! Gobble! Gobble!" of General Bolivar, the White Holland turkey. "Oh, dear me!" exclaimed Carolyn May, flashing out of the carriage. "That bad, _bad_ Prince has run to talk to the hens and all, and he ought to _know_ by this time that they don't like him. And old Bolivar will chase him and maybe get spanked again, if Aunty Rose hears it." She started around the house on the run to quell the panic among the feathered denizens of the rear premises, and to scold Prince. Aunty Rose did not appear and the little girl thought she must be at her own little house around the corner from the Stagg homestead. And where was Aunt Mandy? There was nobody on the back porch to welcome their arrival!