machine and came leisurely up the rise among the trees.

"I hoped you might be Matt Blake," said Miss Priscilla. "He's got as far as to have the shingles here."

"Well, I ain't," remarked Marley in the pleasant, drawling, leisurely, island voice.

"What you got for me?" inquired Miss Burridge.

"Telegram." The boy brought the store envelope from his pocket.

"Oh, I hate 'em," said Miss Burridge apprehensively.

Marley held it aggravatingly away from Philip's extended hand. "Take it back if you want me ter," he said with a grin. "It's ten cents anyway, whether you take it or not."

"Oh, yes, I've got the money right here." Miss Priscilla turned to a shelf over the sink and took a dime from a purse which lay there.

[Pg 17]

[Pg 17]

"Here." She gave it to Marley, who without more ado jumped on his wheel and coasted down among the trees and off over the soft grass.

"You open it, Phil. My spectacles ain't here anyway," said Miss Priscilla anxiously.

So Philip tore open the envelope. The look of amazement which overspread his face as the message greeted him caused Miss Burridge to exclaim fearfully: "Speak out, speak out, Phil."

"They must have taken this down wrong at the store," he said. Then he read the scrawled words slowly. "'Look in broiler oven for legs.'"

The cryptic sentence appeared to have a magical effect upon Miss Priscilla. Her face beamed and she threw up her hands in thanksgiving.

"Glory be!" she exclaimed devoutly.

"What am I stumbling on?" said Philip. "Have you taken to wiring in cipher?"

"You see" said Miss Priscilla excitedly, reaching for the telegram which Philip yielded, "it came without any legs. Mr. Buell himself looked it over on the wharf and said he couldn't find 'em anywhere; and, of course, it was a terrible anxiety to me and I[Pg 18] wrote to them right off, and I was goin' to 

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