There were costlier goods, and some of the girls of the graduating class were to have them; but Ruth chose something so durable and at so low a price that she hoped Uncle Jabez would not be sorry for his generosity. She saw the goods, and lace, and buttons, and all the rest, made up into a neat package and sent across to the other counter with the bill, and then went out of the store and up Market Street toward the railroad. She saw Uncle Jabez nowhere, or she would have run to him to thank him for the present. And she had been in Mercy Curtis' front window for quite an hour before the mules turned the corner into the street and the wagon rattled up to the house and stopped. "And is that ugly old man your uncle?" demanded Mercy, who had been less crusty and exacting herself on this occasion. "That is Uncle Jabez;" admitted Ruth, hastening to put on her hat. "He is an ugly one; isn't he? I'd like to know him, I would," declared the odd child. "He ain't one that's always smirking and smiling, I bet you!" "He isn't given much to smiling, I must admit," laughed Ruth, stooping to kiss the crippled girl. "There! Go along with you," said Mercy, sharply. "You tell that ugly, dusty man--Dusty Miller, that's what he is--that I'm coming out to the Red Mill, whether he wants me to or not." And when Ruth got out upon the street Mercy had her window open and cried through the opening, shaking her little fist the while: "Remember! You tell Dusty Miller what I told you! I'm coming out there." "What's the matter with that young one?" growled Uncle Jabez, as Ruth climbed aboard and the mules started at a trot before she was really seated beside him. Ruth told him, smiling, that Mercy had taken a fancy to his looks, and a fancy, too, to the Red Mill from her description of it. "She wants very much to come out there this summer--if she can be moved that far." Then Ruth tried to thank the miller for the frock--which bundle she saw carefully placed among the other packages in the body of the wagon--but Uncle Jabez listened very grumpily to her broken words. "I don't know how to thank you, sir; for of all the things I wanted most, I believe this is the very first thing," Ruth said, stumblingly. "I really don't know how to thank you." "Don't try, then," he growled, but without looking at her. "I reckon you can thank Alviry Boggs as much as anybody. She says I owed it to you." "Oh, Uncle--" "There, there! I don't wanter hear no more about it," declared the miller. But after they had rattled on for a while in silence, he said, pursuing the former topic: "There ain't no reason, I s'pose, why that gal can't come out an' see you bimeby, if you want her to."