As the whistle of the eight-fifteen morning train spelt _school_ to Miranda, so the whistle of the milk freight, one long and two short, not only spelled but shouted _Jim Bradley_, and as a matter of course, she took her hand lantern if the night was dark, or else trusted to the moon and stars and following the now well-worn path through the corn patch to “calf pastures,” reached the low shed by the water-tank almost at the moment that the engine gave its final puff, and Jim Bradley swung himself from the caboose and seeing that his rear lights were properly set, promptly forgot his train for an interval ranging from twenty minutes to perhaps half an hour, when traffic on the through express was heavy. Widow Banks had long since announced to inquiries both of the really interested and maliciously curious order, that Randy and Jim Bradley were keeping company, though, at the same time, regretting with a sigh that his business didn’t allow of evenings spent in the austere “fore room” where the one visible eye of the departed deacon’s portrait done in air brush crayon, might witness the courting. Neither was it possible for Randy to exhibit him to the neighbours in a bright and shining buggy with a blue bow tied to the whip, of a Sunday afternoon, nor had they the chance for the same reason to judge of his capacity at prayer-meeting. If either Randy or Jim had been questioned as to their relations to each other, they would have been speechless upon the subject. Neither had given the matter a thought, and therefore neither was worried by the mazes of material analysis. Miranda simply obeyed a call that made the spot where Jim Bradley was the only possible place for her to be between eight and half past; but when the train left the siding, crossed the bridge over the Moosatuck and disappeared, she returned to the house and gave her mind up to the correction of the smeared papers whereon the youth of Hattertown were struggling along the Arithmetic road, and in striving to prepare for the puzzling questions that the school’s bad boy might spring upon her on the morrow. Jim regarded matters much in the same way, that is, all through that spring, summer, and autumn. When winter set in and the siding grew chilly, the tank shed with its little stove became the only shelter, for, without realizing why, it never occurred to the man that the caboose with its bunk and litter of flags and lanterns was the place for Randy.