On the present occasion Mrs. Brown had reached Mackerel Cove just as preparations for dinner were being completed. Mrs. Sanford, who had been superintending the making of the coffee, had seated her plump person upon the stone mentioned to rest and get cool, when the late-comer appeared. Mrs. Brown sank languidly upon the fallen trunk of a tree. "I didn't know as I should ever get here," she said. "My girl's gone mad." "Gone mad!" ejaculated the doctor's wife. "I knew something dreadful would happen when you found that silver dollar, and kept it: that's always unlucky. Is she really mad? You don't mean Selina?" "No, not Selina, but the hired girl. She must be mad. She poked all my hair-pins down a crack in the floor. Selina thinks she did it to plague me; but I know she's crazy." "I declare! The trouble you have with your girls beats every thing I ever heard of. I should think you'd rather do the work yourself than have them about." "Oh! I must have a girl to shirk things on to," said Mrs. Brown. "Shirk!" exclaimed Mrs. Sanford. "Lawful sakes! I don't have time to shirk. If I hadn't so much to do, I might find time to plan and contrive to get rid of half my work; but now"-- The words died upon her lips as she caught sight of a buggy coming along the shady wood-road. In it sat her daughter Patty, chatting happily with Tom Putnam. The sight filled her with amazement little mixed with pleasure. The lawyer might be a man after her husband's heart; but he was not after hers. He constantly said things she could not understand; he oppressed her as might an unguessed conundrum; and, moreover, he was a dozen years older than her daughter. Clarence Toxteth filled the measure of Mrs. Sanford's requirements when she considered her daughter's matrimonial prospects, which, thrifty housewife that she was, was not seldom. The young man was rich, good-looking, trimly dressed; and Mrs. Sanford appreciated to the full the advantages of the possession of money. The worthy lady was not without a deeply-seated suspicion that Patty, in the depth of her heart, preferred the lawyer to his more pretentious rival. The girl was like her father, and looked at things in a way wholly unaccountable to her mother, who saw only the other side of the shield. To-day Mrs. Sanford had been at ease in her mind, believing Toxteth to have been the chosen escort. She chanced to be out of the way when he arrived at the picnic-ground, and supposed her daughter to be about somewhere. What, then, was her dismay to perceive her driving up with Mr. Putnam, as boldly and gayly as if she had never deceived her family! "Is dinner ready, mother?" called the transgressor lightly, as they drove up. "I am as hungry as three polar bears." "Good-morning, Mrs. Sanford!" the lawyer said. "There is a delightful smell in the air, as if you had been making coffee." "So I have," she returned, a little mollified by the compliment implied. "You are just in time: they are blowing the horn now."