“I do,” said the old lady, mollified.  After all, Maria Champneys’s boy couldn’t be altogether trifling!  “Is what I hear true, that you’re going away from Riverton?  Folks say you’ve got a job in the city.”

“Yes ’m, I’m going away.”

“I reckon it’s just as well.  You’ll do better away from Riverton.  You’ll have to.”

“Yes ’m, I’ll have to,” agreed Peter.  He held out his hand, and the old lady found herself wringing it, and wishing him good luck.

At home he found Emma Campbell carefully packing up all the worthless plunder it had taken her many years to collect.  When he had heartlessly rejected all she didn’t need, she had one small trunk and a venerable carpet-bag.  Everything else was nailed up.  The house itself was to be looked after by the town marshal, who was also the town real-estate agent.  Peter was very vague as to his return.

No railroad runs through Riverton, but the river steamers come and go daily, the town usually quitting work to foregather at the pier to welcome coming and speed departing travelers.  All Riverton made it a point to be on hand the morning Peter Champneys left home to seek his fortune.

Peter never did anything like anybody else.  There was always some diverting bit of individual lunacy to make his proceedings interesting.  This morning Riverton discovered that Emma Campbell was going away, too.  Emma appeared in a black cashmere dress, a blue-and-white checked gingham apron on which a basket of flowers was embroidered in red cross-stitch, and a white bandana handkerchief wound around her head under a respectable black sailor hat.  She carried a large, square cage that had once housed a mocking-bird, and now held the Champneys big black cat.  Laughter and delighted comments greeted the bird-cage, and her carpet-bag received almost as much attention and applause.  Riverton hadn’t seen a bag like that since Reconstruction, and it made the most of its opportunity.

“Emma!  Aren’t you afraid you’ll let the cat out of the bag?”

Emma remained haughtily silent.

“Emma, where you-all goin’?”

“We-all gwine whah we gwine, dat ’s whah we gwine.”  This from Emma, succinctly.

“What you goin’ to do when you get there?” persisted the wag.

“Who, us?  We gwine do whut you-all ain’t know how to do:  we gwine min’ our own business,” said Emma, politely.

“Good-by, Peter!  Don’t set the world on fire, old scout!”

When the boat turned the bend in the river that hid the small town of his birth from his view, Peter felt shaken as he had never thought to be.  Good-by, little home town, where the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune had rained upon him!