“You’re a dear, good fellow, anyway,” said Miranda, “and I hope mother’ll have the house all ready for us when we get back.”

“She will,” replied Ham.  “I shall hardly be easy till I see what she has done with it.”

CHAPTER IV.

“That’s him!”

Dab was standing by the ponies, in front of a store in the village.  His mother was making some purchases in the store, and Dab was thinking how the Morris house would look when it was finished, and it was at him the old farmer was pointing in answer to a question which had just been asked.

The questioner was the sharp-eyed boy who had bothered poor Dick Lee that morning.

At that moment, however, a young lady—­quite young—­came tripping along the sidewalk, and was stopped by Dab Kinzer with: 

“There, Jenny Walters, I forgot my label!”

“Why, Dabney, is that you?  How you startled me!  Forgot your label?”

“Yes,” said Dab; “I’m in another new suit to-day, and I want to have a label with my name on it.  You’d have known me, then.”

“But I know you now,” exclaimed Jenny.  “Why, I saw you yesterday.”

“Yes, and I told you it was me.  Can you read, Jenny?”

“Why, what a question!”

“Because, if you can’t, it wont do me any good to wear a label.”

“Dabney Kinzer,” exclaimed Jenny.  “There’s another thing you ought to get?”

“What’s that?”

“Some good manners,” said the little lady, snappishly.  “Think, of your stopping me in the street to tell me I can’t read.”

“Then you mustn’t forget me so quick,” said Dab.  “If you meet my old clothes anywhere you must call ’em Dick Lee.  They’ve had a change of name.”

“So, he’s in them, is he?  I don’t doubt they look better than they ever did before.”

And Jenny walked proudly away, leaving her old playmate feeling as if he had had a little the worst of it.  That was often the way with people who stopped to talk with Jenny Walters, and she was not as much of a favorite as she otherwise might have been.

Hardly had she disappeared before Dab was confronted by the strange boy.

“Is your name Dabney Kinzer?” said he.

“Yes, I believe so.”

“Well, I’m Mr. Ford Foster, of New York.”

“Come over here to buy goods?” suggested Dab.  “Or to get something to eat?”

Ford Foster was apparently of about Dab’s age, but a full head less in height, so that there was more point in the question than there seemed to be, but he treated it as not worthy of notice, and asked:  “Do you know of a house to let anywhere about here?”

“House to let?” suddenly exclaimed the voice of Mrs. Kinzer, behind him, much to Dab’s surprise.  “Are you asking about a house?  Whom for?”

If Ford Foster had been ready to “chaff” Dick Lee, or even Dab Kinzer, he knew enough to speak respectfully to the portly and business-like lady now before him.