"You haven't time to stop, Sukey. Sally and the children are all well, and are in the storeroom picking over apples. You can see them when we come home this evening; but now we must hurry; so you just get down and set the child in your seat, and let Dan lead the horse, and we will walk through the woods to Miss Sibby's. I don't know what is going on there, but something is." "I thought it was hot biscuits out of the new flour," said Miss Grandiere. "Yes, it is that, too," replied Mrs. Hedge, without perceiving the sarcasm; "but there is something else--something that that wild young blade, Roland Bayard, and that young Midshipman Force, have on foot. I know there is!" "Roland Bayard! Has he come home?" "So Gad says. I couldn't get much out of that nigger, though. He said he was in a hurry, and hadn't time to stop. He said he had to carry that bag of wheat to the mill and get it ground, and carry it back home in time to make bread for supper; so you see I couldn't get much out of him." By this time the new order of procession was formed, and the sisters walked on together, followed by little Rosemary on the saddle, and Dan leading the horse. "I should not think," said Miss Grandiere, "that young Midshipman Force would feel very much like skylarking after such a disappointment and mortification as he has had." "No would you, now? But then he was a mere boy, and she only a child, when they were engaged; and then after three years, you know, both might have changed their minds," suggested practical Mrs. Hedge. "I don't know," sighed sentimental Miss Grandiere. "Well, I tell you, of all the scapegrace, devil-may-care, never-do-well, neck-or-nothing boys that ever lived or died in this world, that Roland Bayard is the very worst! I am sorry young Force has anything to do with him." "I don't think he is evil at heart," pleaded Miss Grandiere. "'Evil at heart'" repeated Mrs. Hedge, reflectively. "No, perhaps not." "He is a little wild, to be sure." "'A little wild!' He is enough to break Miss Sibby's heart!" "I don't see why. He is no kin to her." "No; but she loves him as if he were her only son. She liked to have cried her eyes out when he went to sea, you know." "Yes, I know. And yet it was as good a career as he could enter upon. The merchant service is not so genteel as the navy, to be sure, but, then, it is really more promising, in a lucrative point of view, and a young man of no family need not mind about the gentility." "Yet that is just what grieved Miss Sibby's heart--that her adopted nephew should be obliged to gratify his passion for the sea by entering the merchant service instead of the United States Navy." "Poor Miss Sibby! It is hard to say whether her pride in her own descent or her love for her adopted nephew is her ruling passion," concluded Miss Grandiere, with a smile.