“Oh, yes, Sir,—­I’m sure I’ll try without that, Sir.  He will be glad to oblige you, when he knows how you need it,” she said, offering to return the coin.

“No, no, Miss Laura, I want to pay him well; and if you succeed,—­why, no money can pay you, Miss Laura; I don’t profess to be rich enough to do it.”

Here the outposts gave another alarm, and again the hosts of the ruby uniform were gathering hurriedly in their two muster-fields.

“Why, I will go and try, Sir,” said Laura, so much confused by the novelty and magnitude of the circumstances that she opened the closet-door before opening the only one that led out of the room.

Fairly out of Chip’s presence, she saw instantly and instinctively the worthlessness of that gold eagle, however genuine, compared with her sisterly love, in her mission to Frank.  So she ran directly to her mother in the long kitchen, and, planking the American eagle upon the sloppy little table where the eels were rapidly getting dressed, said,—­

“Why, mother, that gentleman wants to hire Frank to carry him to Captain Grant’s, and I’m sure he ought to go without hiring.  I’ll go right out and see him.”

“That’s right, Laury; tell him he ought to be ashamed of himself!”

“Oh, no, mother, I won’t tell him any such thing,” said Laura, laughingly, as she hopped and skipped towards the barn.

“Well, Frank, how’s Nell Gwyn, this morning?” cheerily cried Laura to Frank, who seemed to be getting his harness into a worse snarl, in his grouty attempts to get it out of one.

“The mare’s well enough, if she hadn’t been insulted.”

“Why, that’s abominable, Frank!  But let me get that snarl out.”

“You get it out!  You get out yourself, Laule.”

“Why, that’s all I’m good for, Frank; I always pick out the snarls in the house, you know, and I should like to try it once in the barn.”

“The tarnal old thing’s bewitched, I believe,” said Frank, allowing his sister to interfere and quietly untwist and turn right side out the various parts which he had put wrong by all sorts of torsion.  “I’ll teach Boston chaps to know that there are some things they can’t have for money!  When Nell and I have agreed to have a good time, we a’n’t goin’ to be ordered off nor bought off;—­we’ll have it.”

“So I say, Frank.  But suppose I wanted you to give me a ride, Frank?”

“Why, Laule, you know I would go to the North Pole with you.  If Mam would only let you go to Concord with me, I’d wait till noon for you.”

“Well, maybe she will, Frank.  She wants you to carry that man to Captain Grant’s bad enough to let me go in the afternoon.”

“But I told him I wouldn’t carry him,—­and, gol darn it, I won’t!”

“Of course you won’t carry him on his own account, or for the sake of his money,—­but for my sake perhaps you will.”