“Mebbe he thought you said Greenville; this train goes to Greenville, if that’ll do you!  Folks ain’t used to the new station yet, and the ticket agents are all bran’ new too,—­guess you got hold of a tenderfoot!”

“But Greenville will not ‘do’ for me,” exclaimed Gilbert.  “I want to go to Greentown.”

“Well, get off at Lowell, the first stop,—­you’ll know when you come to it because this gentleman that wanted to go to Lawrence will get off there, and this young lady that was intendin’ to go to North Conway.  There’ll be four of you; jest a nice party.”

Gilbert choked with wrath as he saw the mirth of the other passengers.

“What train shall I be able to take to Greentown,” he managed to call after the conductor.

“Don’t know, sonny!  Ask the ticket agent in the Lowell deepot; he’s an old hand and he’ll know!”

Gilbert’s pride was terribly wounded, but his spirits rose a little later when he found that he would only have to wait twenty minutes in the Lowell station before a slow train for Greentown would pick him up, and that he should still reach his destination before bedtime, and need never disclose his stupidity.

After all, this proved to be his only error, for everything moved smoothly from that moment, and he was as prudent and successful an ambassador as Mother Carey could have chosen.  He found the Colonel, whose name was not Foster, by the way, but Wheeler; and the Colonel would not allow him to go to the Mansion House, Beulah’s one small hotel, but insisted that he should be his guest.  That evening he heard from the Colonel the history of the yellow house, and the next morning the Colonel drove him to the store of the man who had charge of it during the owner’s absence in Europe, after which Gilbert was conducted in due form to the premises for a critical examination.

The Yellow House, as Garden Fore-and-Aft seemed destined to be chiefly called, was indeed the only house of that color for ten miles square.  It had belonged to the various branches of a certain family of Hamiltons for fifty years or more, but in course of time, when it fell into the hands of the Lemuel Hamiltons, it had no sort of relation to their mode of existence.  One summer, a year or two before the Careys had seen it, the sons and daughters had come on from Boston and begged their father to let them put it in such order that they could take house parties of young people there for the week end.  Mr. Hamilton indulgently allowed them a certain amount to be expended as they wished, and with the help of a local carpenter, they succeeded in doing several things to their own complete satisfaction, though it could not be said that they added to the value of the property.  The house they regarded merely as a camping-out place, and after they had painted some bedroom floors, set up some cots, bought a kitchen stove and some pine tables and chairs, they regarded that part of the difficulty