[eBook #10359] Language: English Chatacter set encoding: US-ASCII ***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK AUNT JANE'S NIECES AT MILLVILLE*

THE AGENT III MILLVILLE HEARS EXCITING NEWS IV ETHEL MAKES

His father had left him a little farm at Millville.

" "Where is Millville?" inquired Uncle John, thoughtfully.

" "Have you investigated the farm at all?" "I looked up a real estate dealer living at Millville, and wrote him about the Wegg farm.

Also Plymouth Rock Hens & Road Commissioner Agent for Radley's Lives of the Saints Insurance and Watermelons My Specialty Millville, Mount County, N.Y.

So he dictated the following letter: Dear Sir: Mr. John Merrick, the present owner of the Wegg farm at Millville, desires to spend his summer vacation on the premises, and therefore requests you to have the house and grounds put in first-class shape as soon as possible, and to notify me directly the work is done.

MILLVILLE HEARS EXCITING NEWS.

Millville is rather difficult to locate on the map, for the railroads found it impossible to run a line there, Chazy Junction, the nearest station, is several miles away, and the wagon road ascends the foothills every step of the distance.

Millville is built where the Little Bill rushes into the lake.

Above the mill a rickety wooden bridge spans the stream, for here the highway from Chary Junction reaches the village of Millville and passes the wooden structures grouped on either side its main street on the way to Thompson's Crossing, nine miles farther along.

Dick Pearson's farm house is scarcely a quarter of a mile up the highway, but it isn't in Millville, for all that.

It is a poor farming country around Millville.

The tourist seldom penetrates these inaccessible foothills; the roads are too rough and primitive for automobiles; so Millville is shamefully neglected, and civilization halted there some half a century ago.

He was a quiet man, had a good library in his comfortable rooms over the store, and took the only New York paper that found its way into Millville.

Just why that silent old sea-dog, Jonas Wegg, had come into this secluded wilderness to locate was a problem the Millville people had never yet solved.

Wednesday Ethel took Old Hucks over to Millville and bought for him from Sam Cotting a new suit of dark gray "store clothes," together with shirts, shoes and underwear.

"Can you tell us, sir, where Millville is?" he asked.

A three-seated democrat wagon was engaged to carry the party to the Wegg farm at Millville, and a rickety lumber wagon would take the baggage.

"Fer the two teams to Millville.

When we cross it, we're at Millville.

" "That Millville?" asked Uncle John, eagerly.

Millville waited in agonized suspense for three days for tangible evidence that "the nabob was in their midst," as Nib Corkins poetically expressed it; but the city folks seemed glued to the farm and no one of them had yet appeared in the village.

Although the agent had been late in starting from Millville and Nick Thorne's sorrel mare had walked every step of the way, Peggy was obliged to wait in the yard a good half hour for the "nabob" to finish his breakfast.

Amherst, Mass. Miss M.L. Matthews, Millville, N. Y. " S.M. Wells, Middletown, N. Y. Mrs. W.D. McFarland, Winsted, Conn.