“Oh well, Mr. Marsh sent down to the city and had this Mr. Clark come up to work for them.  He doesn’t call him ’Mr. Clark’—­just ‘Clark,’ short like that.  I guess he’s Mr. Marsh’s hired man in the city.  Only he can do everything in the house, too.  But I don’t feel like calling him ‘Clark’ because he’s grown-up, and so I call him ‘Mr. Clark.’” She did not tell Aunt Hetty that she sort of wanted to make up to him for being somebody’s servant and being called like one.  It made her mad and she wanted to show he could be a mister as well as anybody.  She began on the third cookie.  What else could she say to Aunt Hetty, who always wanted to know the news so?  She brought out, “Well, I tell you, in the afternoon, when I get home, mostly old Mr. Welles is out in his garden.”

“Gardin!” cried Aunt Hetty.  “Mercy on us, making garden the fore-part of April.  Where does he think he’s living?  Florida?”

“I don’t believe he’s exactly making garden,” said Elly.  “He just sort of pokes around there, and looks at things.  And sometimes he sits down on the bench and just sits there.  He’s pretty old, I guess, and he walks kind of tired, always.”

“Does the other one?” asked Aunt Hetty.

This made Elly sit up, and say very loud, “No, indeedy!” She really hadn’t thought before how very untired Mr. Marsh always seemed.  She added, “No, the other one doesn’t walk tired, nor he doesn’t poke around in the garden.  He takes long tramps way back of the mountains, over Burnham way.”

“For goodness’ sakes, what’s he find up there?”

“He likes it.  He comes over and borrows our maps and things to study, and he gets Mother to tell him all about everything.  He gets Toucle to tell him about the back trails, too.”

“Well, he’s a smart one if he can get a word out of Toucle.”

“Yes, he does.  Everybody talks to him.  You have to if he starts in.  He’s very lively.”

“Does he get you to talk?” asked Aunt Hetty, laughing at the idea.

“Well, some,” stated Elly soberly.  She did not say that Mr. Marsh always seemed to her to be trying to get some secret out of her.  She didn’t have any secret that she knew of, but that was the way he made her feel.  She dodged him mostly, when she could.

“What’s the news from your father?”

“Oh, he’s all right,” said Elly.  She fell to thinking of Father and wishing he would come back.

“When’s he going to get through his business, up there?”

“Before long, I guess.  Mother said maybe he’d be back here next month.”  Elly was aware that she was again not being talkative.  She tried to think of something to add.  “I’m very much obliged for these cookies,” she said.  “They are awfully good.”

“They’re the kind your mother always liked, when she was your age,” said Aunt Hetty casually.  “I remember how she used to sit right there on Father’s hair-trunk and eat them and watch me just like you now.”