“Good evening!” I said.  “Is this Mr. Pratt?”

“Sure thing!” said he.  “Where’s the Perfessor?”

“On his way to Brooklyn,” said I.  “And I’ve got Parnassus.  He told me to be sure to call on you.  So here we are.”

“Well, I want to know!” ejaculated Mrs. Pratt.  “Think of Parnassus turned suffrage!  Ben, you put up the critters, and I’ll take Mrs. Mifflin in to supper.”

“Hold on there,” I said.  “My name’s McGill—­Miss McGill.  See, it’s painted on the wagon.  I bought the outfit from Mr. Mifflin.  A business proposition entirely.”

“Well, well,” said Mr. Pratt.  “We’re glad to see any friend of the Perfessor.  Sorry he’s not here, too.  Come right in and have a bite with us.”

They were certainly good-hearted folk, Mr. and Mrs. Ben Pratt.  He put Peg and Bock away in the barn and gave them their supper, while Mrs. Pratt took me up to her spare bedroom and brought me a jug of hot water.  Then they all trooped back into the dining-room and the meal began again.  I am a connoisseur of farm cooking, I guess, and I’ve got to hand it to Beulah Pratt that she was an A-1 housewife.  Her hot biscuit was perfect; the coffee was real Mocha, simmered, not boiled; the cold sausage and potato salad was as good as any Andrew ever got.  And she had a smoking-hot omelet sent in for me, and opened a pot of her own strawberry preserve.  The children (two boys and a girl) sat open-mouthed, nudging one another, and Mr. Pratt got out his pipe while I finished up on stewed pears and cream and chocolate cake.  It was a regular meal.  I wondered what Andrew was eating and whether he had found the nest behind the wood pile where the red hen always drops her eggs.

“Well, well,” said Mr. Pratt, “tell us about the Perfessor.  We was expectin’ him here some time this fall.  He generally gets here around cider time.”

“I guess there isn’t so much to tell,” I said.  “He stopped up at our place the other day, and said he wanted to sell his outfit.  So I bought him out.  He was pining to get back to Brooklyn and write a book.”

“That book o’ his!” said Mrs. Pratt.  “He was always talkin’ on it, but I don’t believe he ever started it yet.”

“Whereabout do you come from, Miss McGill?” said Pratt.  I could see he was mighty puzzled at a woman driving a vanload of books around the country, alone.

“Over toward Redfield,” I said.

“You any kin to that writer that lives up that way?”

“You mean Andrew McGill?” I said.  “He’s my brother.”

“Do tell!” exclaimed Mrs. Pratt.  “Why the Perfessor thought a terrible lot of him.  He read us all to sleep with one of his books one night.  Said he was the best literature in this State, I do believe.”

I smiled to myself as I thought of the set-to on the road from Shelby.

“Well,” said Pratt, “if the Perfessor’s got any better friends than us in these parts, I’m glad to meet ’em.  He come here first time ’bout four years ago.  I was up working in the hayfield that afternoon, and I heard a shout down by the mill pond.  I looked over that way and saw a couple o’ kids waving their arms and screamin’.  I ran down the hill and there was the Perfessor just a pullin’ my boy Dick out o’ the water.  Dick’s this one over here.”