Miss Ann's lumbering carriage had hardly reached the far corner when the attention of the old men on the porch was arrested by a small, low-swung motor car of the genus runabout. No doubt its motor and wheels had been turned out of a factory but the rest of it was plainly home made. It was painted a bright blue. The rear end might have applied for a truck license, as it was evidently intended as a bearer of burdens, but the front part had the air of a racer and the eager young girl at the wheel looked as though she might be more in sympathy with the front of her car than the back. Be that as it may, she was determined not to let her sympathies run away with her but, much to the delight of the dull old men on the Rye House porch, she stopped her car directly in front of them and carefully rearranged a number of mysterious-looking parcels in the truck end of her car. "Hiyer, Miss Judith?" called Pete Barnes. The girl must stop her engine to hear what the old man was saying. "What is it?" she called back gaily. "I just said hiyer?" "Fine! Hiyer, yourself?" she laughed pleasantly, although stopping the engine entailed getting out and cranking, since her car boasted no self-starter. All of the old men bowed familiarly to the girl and indulged in some form of pleasantry. "Bootlegging now, or what are you up to?" asked Major Fitch. "Worse than that--perfumes and soaps, tooth pastes and cold creams, hair tonics and henna dips, silver polish and spot removers--pretty near everything or a little of it; but I'm going to come call on all of you when I get my wares sorted out." "Do! Do!" they responded, but she was in and off before they could say more. "Gee, that's a pretty girl!" exclaimed the necktie drummer. "I reckon she is," grunted Colonel Crutcher, "pretty and good and sharp as a briar and quick as greased lightning. There isn't a girl like her anywhere around these parts. I don't see what the young folks of the county are thinking about, leaving her out of all their frolics." "Well, you see--" put in another old man. "Yes, I see the best-looking gal of the bunch and the spunkiest and the equal of any of them and the superior of most as far as manners and brains are concerned, just because she comes of plain folks--" "A little worse than plain, Crutcher," put in Judge Middleton. "Those Bucks--" "Oh, then she lives at Buck Hill?" asked the drummer.