“Not a mite.  Real glad to have her.”

“Very well, then she may stay—­an hour, but no longer.  Mind, Babby, dear, I am relying on you not to annoy Mr. Winslow.”

So the juvenile visitor stayed her hour and then obediently went away, in spite of Jed’s urgent invitation to stay longer.  She had asked a good many questions and talked almost continuously, but Mr. Winslow, instead of being bored by her prattle, was surprised to find how empty and uninteresting the shop seemed after she had quitted it.

She came again the next day and the next.  By the end of the week Jed had become sufficiently emboldened to ask her mother to permit her to come in the afternoon also.  This request was the result of a conspiracy between Barbara and himself.

“You ask your ma,” urged Jed.  “Tell her I say I need you here afternoons.”

Barbara looked troubled.  “But that would be a wrong story, wouldn’t it?” she asked.  “You don’t really need me, you know.”

“Eh?  Yes, I do; yes, I do.”

“What for?  What shall I tell her you need me for?”

Jed scratched his chin with the tail of a wooden whale.

“You tell her,” he drawled, after considering for a minute or two, “that I need you to help carry lumber.”

Even a child could not swallow this ridiculous excuse.  Barbara burst out laughing.

“Why, Mr. Winslow!” she cried.  “You don’t, either.  You know I couldn’t carry lumber; I’m too little.  I couldn’t carry any but the littlest, tiny bit.”

Jed nodded, gravely.  “Yes, sartin,” he agreed; “that’s what I need you to carry.  You run along and tell her so, that’s a good girl.”

But she shook her head vigorously.  “No,” she declared.  “She would say it was silly, and it would be.  Besides, you don’t really need me at all.  You just want Petunia and me for company, same as we want you.  Isn’t that it, truly?”

“Um-m.  Well, I shouldn’t wonder.  You can tell her that, if you want to; I’d just as soon.”

The young lady still hesitated.  “No-o,” she said, “because she’d think perhaps you didn’t really want me, but was too polite to say so.  If you asked her yourself, though, I think she’d let me come.”

At first Jed’s bashfulness was up in arms at the very idea, but at length he considered to ask Mrs. Armstrong for the permission.  It was granted, as soon as the lady was convinced that the desire for more of her daughter’s society was a genuine one, and thereafter Barbara visited the windmill shop afternoons as well as mornings.  She sat, her doll in her arms, upon a box which she soon came to consider her own particular and private seat, watching her long-legged friend as he sawed or glued or jointed or painted.  He had little waiting on customers to do now, for most of the summer people had gone.  His small visitor and he had many long and, to them, interesting conversations.