Page:Saxe Holm's Stories, Series Two.djvu/90

80 "Well, I swanny," was Luke's reply. "I donno what I 'm goin to do for hosses."

The city lady looked calmly in his face with the city lady's usual incredulity of anything being impossible in the country town where she is spending her summer, and said:—

"Oh, it won't hurt these horses to come back."

Luke did not deign to argue this point, but answered reflectively:—

"Mebbe I can git Smith's. Hisn warn't out when we come off, an if I don't go for the girls, they can come home in the hotel coach; that warn't full."

"Oh, no; I should much prefer that you should go for them," said the bland lady. "You can surely get horses somewhere."

"There ain't any 'somewhere' in our town mum," replied Luke, sententiously. "If yer don't know jest where a thing is, 't ain't anywheres. But I 'll see that Miss Fanny 's got home somehow or another."

If Fanny Lane had heard Luke's reply, the unconscious and inimitable philosophy of its first clause would have given her a keen delight; but it was all thrown away on Aunt Jane, or if not thrown away entirely, passed for nothing more than the unintentional impudence of a farmer's lad. So that her orders were obeyed, as she would have called it, she was content and unobservant; and, luckily for her complacent peace of mind,