Pete burst into the room wild-eyed, followed by Miss Mehitable, who was talking and laughing. "He was afraid you'd go away without him," she said--"Mercy's sakes, Geraldine Melody, look at your hat!" She darted upon it and snapped some dust off its chiffon. "You'd better be careful how you throw this around. We can't buy a hat like this every day." "Oh, do forgive me, Miss Upton!" murmured the girl, her eyes very bright. "It was her present to me," she added to Ben. "I'm so sorry!" She went to Miss Mehitable and laid her cheek against hers, and Miss Upton bestowed another prodigious wink upon the purchaser of the hat. It did not break his gravity; a gravity which Miss Upton but just now noticed. "Come, Pete, we'll be going," said Ben, and his flushed, serious face worried Miss Mehitable's kind heart, especially as no sign of his merry carelessness returned in his brief leave-taking. When they were gone and the door had closed after them, she looked at the girl accusingly. "Something has happened," she said, in a low tone not to attract Charlotte. "Don't be cross with me about the hat," said the girl, nestling up close to her again. "I just love it--much better even than I did in the store." Miss Mehitable put an arm around her, not because at the moment she loved her, but because she was there. "I wonder," she said, "if there's anything in this world that can make anything but a fool out of a girl before it's too late. I know you're just as crazy about him as he is about you! If you wasn't, would you have been snivellin' around because he might get hurt to the farm? And yet jest 'cause o' your silly, foolish pride you've gone and refused him. It's as plain as the nose on his splendid face. As if in the long run it mattered if Mrs. Barry was a little cantankerous. She's run everything around here so long that she forgets her boy's a man with a mind of his own. It's awful narrow of you, Geraldine, awful narrow!" Upon this the girl lifted her head and smiled faintly into the accusing face. "Won't it be nice to have Pete help us move," she said innocently. Miss Upton's lips tightened. She dropped her arm, moved away, and put the droopy hat back in its box. "You're heartless!" she exclaimed. There was such a peachy bloom on the girl's face. "I won't waste my breath." "I love _you_," said Geraldine, meekly and defensively. "Ho!" snorted her good fairy, unappeased. CHAPTER XIV The Mermaid Shop For the next few days Miss Mehitable had no time to worry over love-affairs. No matter how early she arose in the morning she found Pete arrayed in overalls sitting on the stone step of Upton's Fancy Goods and Notions, and when by the evening of the third day all her goods, wares, and chattels were deposited in the little shop at Keefeport, she wondered how she had ever got on without him.