"Out on de back po'ch, honey, right now. Dar he goes!" The girl heard him, and flew out to meet him. Her heart was throbbing hard, and she was drawing quick, short breaths. "Father!" she cried. "Father! Don't go in the house!" And she caught him by both shoulders and drew him round. He did not know her at first in her fanciful-simple dress and her Gainsborough hat. He was not used to that style of thing, believing that it belonged rather to the world of pictures. He stared at her. Then he broke out with an exclamation, "Lo-rd! Louisianny!" She kept her eyes on his face. They were feverishly bright, and her cheeks were hot. She laughed hysterically. "Don't speak loud," she said. "There are some strange people in the house, and--and I want to tell you something." He was a slow man, and it took him some time to grasp the fact that she was really before him in the flesh. He said, again: "Lord, Louisianny!" adding, cheerfully, "How ye've serprised me!" Then he took in afresh the change in her dress. There was a pile of stove-wood stacked on the porch to be ready for use, and he sat down on it to look at her. "Why, ye've got a new dress on!" he said. "Thet thar's what made ye look sorter curis. I hardly knowed ye." Then he remembered what she had said on first seeing him. "Why don't ye want me to go in the house?" he asked. "What sort o' folks air they?" "They came with me from the Springs," she answered; "and--and I want to--to play a joke on them." She put her hands up to her burning cheeks, and stood so. "A joke on 'em?" he repeated. "Yes," she said, speaking very fast. "They don't know I live here, they think I came from some city,--they took the notion themselves,--and I want to let them think so until we go away from the house. It will be such a good joke." She tried to laugh, but broke off in the middle of a harsh sound. Her father, with one copperas-colored leg crossed over the other, was chewing his tobacco slowly, after the manner of a ruminating animal, while he watched her. "Don't you see?" she asked. "Wa-al, no," he answered. "Not rightly." She actually assumed a kind of spectral gayety. "I never thought of it until I saw it was not Cassandry who was in the kitchen," she said. "The woman who is there didn't know me, and it came into my mind that--that we might play off on them," using the phraseology to which he was the most accustomed. "Waal, we mought," he admitted, with a speculative deliberateness. "Thet's so. We mought--if thar was any use in it." "It's only for a joke," she persisted, hurriedly. "Thet's so," he repeated. "Thet's so." He got up slowly and rather lumberingly from his seat and dusted the chips from his copperas-colored legs. "Hev ye ben enjyin' yerself, Louisianny?" he asked. "Yes," she answered. "Never better." "Ye must hev," he returned, "or ye wouldn't be in sperrits to play jokes." Then he changed his tone so suddenly that she was startled.