“What did he mean by asking you to be his father-in-law?” inquired Judy, after the dogcart that was taking Will Walling to the station had rolled away from the door. “Oh, only his nonsense. You know, of course, that, as I have no mother nor he any daughter, he could never have been my father-in-law,” replied Ran. So Judy never suspected how it was. But before many months Judy and Mike were claimed by a father with a pedigree which the most heathenish worshiper of rank might have been proud to acknowledge. CHAPTER XXVIII HOPE AND LIFE “Poley, dear darling, will you go with Cleve and me to West Virginia to live?” exclaimed Palma, running into the cabinet kitchen of her flat, where good Mrs. Pole was busy over the fire, baking those very muffins in which she so excelled. Cleve had gone out to change the bonanza check to pay the rent and to give up the flat. Poley paused, with a spoonful of batter held in her hand, halfway between the bowl on the table and the muffin rings in the pan on the range. “What is that you said, my dear?” Palma repeated her question. “Will I go with you to Vest Wirginny? That’s the furrin nation we was to war with, ain’t it?” inquired Mrs. Pole, going on to fill her muffin rings. “Don’t mention the war, Poley. I cannot bear to talk of it.” “Well, I won’t. But that Vest Wirginny—where is it? In New Orleenes?” inquired Mrs. Pole, whose ideas of geography were so vague that she once asked Palma if Africa was in the United States. And Palma, to spare the good woman’s self-esteem, answered that Africans, or their descendants, had been in America for a couple of centuries. Whereupon Mrs. Pole had added that, of course, she knew that America was in the United States. Palma had not set her right, but ruminated in her own mind on the fact of the future when our national New Jerusalem would not make a part of the Western continent, but the Western continent would be only a part of the grand republic of the planet Earth. But this is a digression. Now to return. “West Virginia is much nearer than New Orleans,” replied Palma. Mrs. Pole filled the last of her muffin rings and set the pan containing them on the range before she spoke again. “And you and Mr. Stuart be going there to live, ma’am, you say?” “Indeed, yes—and very soon, too.” Mrs. Pole put the bowl of batter in the cupboard, covered it over with a clean napkin and sat down, “to save her back,” while her muffins were baking. “For good?” she inquired. “Yes, indeed, for good in every sense of the word, I do hope and believe. I will tell you all about it.” Mrs. Pole jumped up and ran into her little bedroom adjoining the kitchen, and brought out a small, low-backed rocker, saying to her little lady: “There! Sit ye down while you talk. You have often enough told me to ‘spare my back’ whenever I could lawfully do so. And now I tell you to spare your own.”