There was something else that Betty did not tell her mother, also, and that was of her first peculiar and annoying experience with the woman at the newsstand at the station. It was about two weeks after Christmas that Betty had first seen the woman. Mr. Denby had asked her to go around by the station on her way home and purchase for him the December issue of "Research." He said it was not a very popular magazine, and that the woman was one of the few agents in town who kept it for sale. There was an article on Babylonian tablets in the December number, and he wished to see it. The station was not very far from her home, and Betty was glad to do the errand, of course; but when she arrived at the newsstand she found a most offensive person who annoyed her with questions--a large woman with unpleasantly prominent eyes and a wart on her chin. "Yes, Miss, I've got the magazine right here," she said with alacrity, in reply to Betty's request. "But, say, hain't I seen you before somewheres?" Betty shook her head. "I don't think so," she smiled. "At least, I do not remember seeing you anywhere." "Well, don't you come here often, to the station, or somethin'?" persisted the woman. "No, I have never been here before--except the day I arrived in town last September." "H-m; funny!" frowned the woman musingly. "I'm a great case fur faces, an' I don't very often make a mistake. I could swear I'd seen you somewheres." Betty smiled and shook her head again, as she turned away with her magazine. Twice after that Mr. Denby had sent her to this same newsstand for a desired periodical; and on both occasions the woman had been cheerfully insistent in her questions, and in her reiterations that somewhere she certainly had seen her, as she never made mistakes in faces. "An' yer workin' fur Burke Denby on the hill, ain't ye?" she asked at last. Betty colored. "I am working for Mr. Denby--yes." "H-m; like him?" "If you'll give me my change, please," requested Betty then, the flush deepening on her cheeks. "I am in some haste." The woman laughed none too pleasantly. "You don't want ter answer, an' I ain't sayin' I wonder," she chuckled. "He's a queer bug, an' no mistake, an' I don't wonder ye don't like him." "On the contrary, I like him very much," flashed Betty, hurriedly catching up her magazine, and almost snatching the coins from the woman's hand, in her haste to be away. Betty had not told her mother of these encounters. More and more plainly Betty was seeing how keenly averse to meeting people her mother was, and how evasive she was in her answers to the questions the market-men sometimes put to her. Instinctively Betty felt that these questions of the newsstand woman would distress her mother very much; so Betty kept them carefully to herself.