“La, child, I don’t live alone,” was the smiling answer. “My daughter Manda, an’ Henry Scott, her husband, have lived with me ever since my husband died. Not that I couldn’t live alone,” she added quickly, “for though I’m seventy-five I hold my age pretty well, an’ chore about a considerable. The reason I’m alone to-day is that Henry’s mother is here on a visit. She’s one o’ them wimmen that’s always on the go, an’ to-day there wa’n’t no hold up but they must go over to see Manda’s cousin Jane. They wanted me to go with ’em, but I said no, I wasn’t gwine joltin’ off ten mile as long as I had a comfortable place to stay in. When folks got to my age home was the best place for ’em, and I was gwine to stay there,” and she gave a chirruping little laugh. “Henry’s mother is younger’n I be—three years, five months an’ fifteen days younger, but she don’t begin to be so spry. Has to have a nap every day; an’ she’s got eight different medicines with her, an’ what she don’t take she rubs on. It keeps her pretty busy a takin’ an’ a rubbin’ on,” and she chuckled again at what evidently seemed to her very amusing in one younger than herself. “How old be you?” she asked, her mind coming back from Henry’s mother to Posey, who was waiting with wondering eagerness. “I shall be fourteen in December.” “You ain’t very big of your age.” “But I’m real strong,” urged Posey, who experienced a sudden sense of mortification that she was not larger. “You look as though you might be,” and the old lady looked over her glasses at the well-knit, rounded little figure. “Where have you been livin’?” “Some fifteen miles from here,” answered Posey, who felt that exact information would not be prudent. “But I couldn’t stay there any longer,” she hastily added, “and as I haven’t any father or mother, I’d like to find some nice people who wanted a girl to live with and help them.” “I really wish I knew of such a place for you, but Mandy, my daughter, has all the family she can see to; and none of the neighbors needs any one. But I dare presume you won’t have no trouble in findin’ some one who wants just such a little girl.” So the old lady cheerfully dismissed the subject without dreaming how absolutely homeless she really was; and as the storm had now passed over filled both their hands with cookies and with a smiling face watched the tin-wagon on its way again. CHAPTER XII A PARTING OF WAYS For a while Ben and Posey rode along almost in silence over the roads beaten smooth and clean by the heavy shower, while the wayside ditches were still noisy little rills, and the trees shook down showers of raindrops with every passing breeze. Posey, in spite of herself, could not help a sorrowful feeling of discouragement at the failure of her first effort at home-finding. Not so much for the refusal itself, though she felt that to live with such a cheery old lady would be quite delightful, as the fear that other attempts might be equally useless.