“Huh! If she don't, it's no loss to her. It's loss to them,” declared the old lady. “And I'd hate to have anybody come and take her away from us now.” Sister no longer wore her short hair in four “pigtails”. She had learned to dress it neatly like other girls of her age, and although it would never be like the beautiful blue-black tresses of Lettie Bronson, Hiram had to admit that the soft brown of Sister's hair, waving so prettily over her forehead, made the girl's features more than a little attractive. She was an entirely different person, too, from the one who had helped Lettie and her friends ashore from the grounded motor-boat that day, so long ago--and so Lettie herself thought when she rode into the Atterson yard one October day on her bay horse, and Sister met her on the porch. “Why, you're Mrs. Atterson's girl, aren't you?” cried Lettie, leaning from her saddle to offer her hand to Sister. “I wouldn't have known you.” Sister was getting plump, she had roses in her cheeks, and she wore a neat, whole, and becoming dress. “You're Miss Bronson,” said Sister, gravely. “I wouldn't forget you.” Perhaps there was something in what Sister said that stung Lettie Bronson's memory. She flushed a little; but then she smiled most charmingly and asked for Hiram. “Husking corn, Miss, with Henry Pollock, down on the bottom-land.” “Oh! way down there? Well! you tell him--Why, I'll want you to come, too,” laughed Lettie, quite at her best now. Nobody could fail to answer Lettie Bronson's smile with its reflection, when she chose to exert herself in that direction. “Why, I just came to tell you both that on Friday we're going to have an old-fashioned husking-bee for all the young folks of the neighborhood, at our place. You must come yourself--er--Sister, and tell Hiram to come, too. “Seven o'clock, sharp, remember--and I'll be dreadfully disappointed if you don't come,” added Lettie, turning her horse's head homeward, and saying it with so much cordiality that her hearer's heart warmed. “She is pretty,” mused Sister, watching the bay horse and its rider flying along the road. “I don't blame Hiram for thinking she's the very finest girl in these parts. “She is,” declared Sister, emphatically, and shook herself. Hiram had finished husking the lowland corn that day, with Henry's help, and it was all drawn in at night. When the last measured basket was heaped in the crib by lantern light, the young farmer added up the figures chalked up on the lintel of the door. “For goodness' sake, Hiram! it isn't as much as that, is it?” gasped Henry, viewing the figures the young farmer wrote proudly in his memorandum book. “Six acres--six hundred and eighty baskets of sound corn,” crowed “Hiram. And it's corn that is corn, as Mr. Bronson says. “It's not quite as hard as the upland corn, for the growing season was not quite long enough for it; but it's better than the average in the county----”