“‘I’m glad you don’t,’ smiled her mother. ‘Well, Jane—I hope I am not doing wrong—fix two boxes of lunch—and, you know you take the train to Paterson and then the horse-cars to Hanover—I will give you five dollars, Marion, you will have to take a carriage at Hanover—but you know all about it—you went with me to look at the house—and you know where to have the furniture put as I told you that day—and you can get things at the store—half a mile off—Jane, you will have to keep Rob and baby—Marion, I don’t know _what_ your mother will say—it’s well there was a load of things left so that I may have a bed to-night—’ “During this prologue my feet were dancing, and my fingers rubbing each other impatiently, I was so afraid she would end with a sufficient reason for not allowing us to go. I could not believe that we were really off until we sat in the train, each with a huge, stuffed lunch-box, and I with five dollars in my pocketbook and my head confused with ten thousand parting directions, among which was, many times repeated: ‘Be sure to _ask_ that girl to stay all night with you.’ “At the terminus at Hanover we got out and stood and looked around. Elsie was a little thing, but she was wise, and I liked to ask her advice. “‘Aunt Bessie found a horse and a carriage at the blacksmith’s shop that day, didn’t she?’ “This was hardly asking advice, but Elsie brightened, and answered deliberately: ‘We walked on a canal-boat, then, to the other side, for the bridge was being built.’ “‘Then we are in the right place, for there’s the new bridge,’ I exclaimed, relieved, for I missed the canal boat we had that day made a bridge of. “‘And we went down that way to the blacksmith’s shop,’ she said pointing in a familiar direction. Yes, I remembered that. The immensity of my undertaking was beginning to press upon me; I was glad I had brought Elsie. “With a business-like air we crossed the bridge, and walked along a grass-bordered path to the blacksmith’s shop; there seemed to be two shops in the long building; before one open door a horse was being shod, before the other a group of men stood with hands in their pockets watching a fire that had died down into a red-hot circle—the circle looked like red-hot iron. As we waited for the horse to be harnessed and brought, Elsie and I stood across the street watching the red-hot iron ring—as large as a wagon wheel. “Elsie looked as though she were forgetting everything in that red wonder, and I began to feel a trifle strange and lonely, for my little cousin was so self-absorbed that she was not much company. “‘Hallo, there!’ called the blacksmith as a boy drove a two-seated wagon out from behind somewhere. “With my best business air I asked the price before we stepped up into the wagon and replied, ‘Very well,’ to his modest one dollar.