She stopped herself. She had been on the point of saying, "And it isn't for long, anyway." She did not know what Francis had told the men about their plans, or his plans for her cooking, and she was resolved to be absolutely loyal to him. When she went he should have nothing to say about her but that she had behaved as well as any woman could. "If you're ready, we'll go back to the cabin, Marjorie," said Francis, appearing on the edge of the threshold, looking even more like a thundercloud than normal lately. She hung up the dishcloth, gave Pennington a last grateful smile, and followed Francis back. "Pennington's a good fellow," he said abruptly as they gained their own porch, "but I don't want you to have too much to do with him. He's kindly and all that, but he's a remittance man." Marjorie's eyes opened wide with excitement at this. She had heard of remittance men, but never seen one before. "How perfectly thrilling!" she said. CHAPTER X Francis looked at her as if she had said something very surprising. "Thrilling?" he said, apparently considering it the wrong adjective. She nodded. "Why, yes. I've read of remittance men all my life, but I never dreamed I'd meet one. And--I always wanted to know, Francis," said she, as she opened the door and walked in and settled herself cozily on the window-seat. "What does he remit? They never say." "He doesn't remit," explained Francis rather disgustedly, following her over and sitting down by her at the other corner of the seat. "Other people do it." "'Curiouser and Curiouser! I begin to think I'm in Wonderland!'" she quoted. "I think the easiest way for you to do will be just to tell me all about remittance men, the way you do a child when it starts to ask questions. Just what are they, and do they all look like Pennington, and are they trained to be it, or does it come natural?" "A remittance man," Francis explained again, "is a term, more or less, of disgrace. He is a man who has done something in his own country which makes his relatives wish him out of it. So they remit money to him as long as he stays away." If he expected to make Marjorie feel shocked at Pennington by this tale he was quite disappointed. "And does Pennington get money for staying away, besides what he helps you and gets?" she demanded. "What does he do with it all?" "I don't suppose it's a great deal," said Francis reluctantly. "Well, all I have to say is, I'm perfectly certain that if anybody's paying Pennington to stay away from England, they're some horrid kind of person that just is disagreeable, and doesn't know his real worth. Why, Francis, he's helped me learn the ways here, and looked after me, as if he was my mother. He's exactly like somebody's mother." Francis could not help smiling a little. Marjorie, when she wanted to be--sometimes when she did not want to be--was irresistible.