62 TROTTYS WEDDING TOUR.

“What will they do?” said all the relations in light
mourning, after they had got home. “If Jemima had only
been a boy!”

“ What shall I do?” repeated Jem, dabbing the sign quite
dry. “If I had only been a boy!”

“ Let — Jem — look after — the stock.” Although she
was n’t a boy, the last thing that her father had faintly said
was this. It had seemed very unnatural to the relations in
light mourning. There was an uncle who expected to be
executor, and a first cousin who talked of buying out him-
self. But it had seemed so natural to Jem that she had not
even offered the store-key to the uncle, and whatever appro-
priate masculine disturbance of the “estate” the law might
require by and by, nobody was ready just now to trouble lit-
tle Jem, wishing that she were a boy, in the old store, over
the old sign. :

Somebody did trouble her, however. It was a customer,
at the locked door.

_“ Come in,” said Jem.

“JT would if I could,” said the customer through the key-
hole.

“ O, I forgot,” said Jem, jumping, and let him in.

“Where ’s your father?” said the customer. He was a
loud man, just in from the prairies somewhere, and “ has not
heard,” thought Jem.

She thought it aloud in her confusion, and the loud man,
in his confusion, sat down on one end of the sign, and