DONALD AND DOROTHY

DOROTHY AT SIXTEEN.

DONALD AND DOROTHY

BY

MARY MAPES DODGE

AUTHOR OF "HANS BRINKER; OR, THE SILVER SKATES"
WITH ORIGINAL ILLUSTRATIONS

NEW YORK
THE CENTURY CO.
1906

Copyright, 1883,
By Mary Mapes Dodge.
All rights reserved.
The De Vinne Press.

CONTENTS.

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.

DONALD AND DOROTHY.

CHAPTER I.

IN WHICH NONE OF THE CHARACTERS APPEAR.

HE door of the study was closed, and only Nero was to be seen. He, poor dog, stood in the wide hall gazing wistfully at the knob, and pricking up his ears whenever sounds of movement in the room aroused his hope of being admitted. Suddenly he gave a yelp of delight. Somebody surely was approaching the door. The steps—they were a man's—halted. There was a soft, rolling sound, as if the master's chair were being drawn to the table; next, a rustling of paper; a deep-voiced moan; the rapid scratching of a quill pen; then silence—silence—and poor Nero again stood at half-mast.

Any ordinary dog would have barked, or pawed impatiently at the door. But Nero was not an ordinary dog. He knew that something unusual was going on, something with which even he, the protector and pet of the household, the frisky Master of Ceremonies, must not interfere. But when the bell-pull within the room clicked sharply, and a faint tinkle came up from below, he flew eagerly to the head of the basement stairs, and wagged his bushy tail with a steady, vigorous stroke, as though it were the crank of some unseen machine which slowly and surely would draw Liddy, the housemaid, up the stairway.

The bell rang again. The machine put on more steam. Still no Liddy. Could she be out? Nero ran back to take an agonized glance at the motionless knob, leaped frantically to the stairs again—and, at that moment, the study-door opened. There was a heavy tread; the ecstatic Nero rushed in between a pair of dignified legs moving toward the great hall door; he spun wildly about for an instant, and then, with a deep sigh of satisfaction, settled down on the rug before the study fire. For there was not a soul in the room.

CHAPTER II.

FOURTEEN YEARS AFTERWARD.

The house is there still; so is Nero, now an honored old dog frisky only in his memories. But old as he is in teeth and muscle, he is hardly past middle-age in the wag of his still bushy tail, and is as young as ever in happy devotion to his master. Liddy, too, is down stairs, promoted, but busy as in the days gone by; and the voice of that very bell tinkled but an hour ago.

Here is the same study; some one within, and the door closed. Opposite, on the other side of the wide hall, is the parlor, its windows looking across piazza, sloping lawn, road-way, and field, straight out to the sparkling lake beyond. Back of the parlor is a sunny sitting-room, its bay-window framing a pleasant view of flower-garden, apple-orchard, and grape-arbor—a few straggling bunches clinging to the almost leafless November vines. And within, throughout the house indeed, floats a sunny-shady combination of out-door air, with a faint, delightful odor of open wood-fires. What a quiet, homelike, beautiful place it is!

Let us look into the sitting-room.

A boy, with his back toward the door, mounted upon the end of a big sofa, his bended knee tightly held between his arms, his head thrust forward earnestly,—altogether, from the rear view, looking like a remarkable torso with a modern jacket on,—that's Donald. Near him, on the sofa, a glowing face with bright brown hair waving back from it, the chin held in two brownish little hands, and beneath that a mass of dark red merino, revealing in a meandering, drapery way that its wearer is half-kneeling, half-sitting,—that's Dorothy.

THE SPARKLING LAKE BEYOND.

I am obliged to confess it, these two inelegant objects on a very elegant piece of furniture are the hero and heroine of my story.

Do not imagine, however, that Donald and Dorothy could not, if they chose to do so, stand before you comely and fair as any girl and boy in the land. It is merely by accident that we catch this first glimpse of them. They have been on that sofa in just those positions for at least five minutes, and, from present appearances, they intend to remain so until further notice.

Dorothy is speaking, and Donald is—not exactly listening, but waiting for his turn to put in a word, thus forming what may be called a lull in the conversation; for up to this point both have been speaking together.

"It's too much for anything, so it is! I'm going to ask Liddy about it, that's what I'm going to do; for she was almost ready to tell me the other day, when Jack came in and made her mad."

"Don't you do it!" Donald's tone is severe, but still affectionate and confidential. "Don't you do it. It's the wrong way, I tell you. What did she get mad at?"

"Oh, nothing. Jack called her 'mess-mate' or something, and she flared up. But, I tell you, I'm just going to ask her right out what makes him act so."

"Nonsense," said Donald. "It's only his sailor-ways; and besides—"

"No, no. I don't mean Jack. I mean Uncle. I do believe he hates me!"

"Oh, Dorry! Dorry!"

"Well, he doesn't love me any more, anyhow! I know he's good and all that, and I love him just as much as you do, Don, every bit, so you needn't be so dreadfully astonished all in a minute. I love Uncle George as much as anybody in the world does, but that is no reason why, whenever Aunt Kate is mentioned, he—"

"Yes, it is, Dot. You ought to wait."

"I have waited—why, Don" (and her manner grows tearful and tragic), "I've waited nearly thirteen years!"

Here Don gives a quick, suddenly suppressed laugh, and asks her, "why she didn't say fourteen," and Dorothy tells him sharply that "he needn't talk—they're pretty even on that score" (which is true enough), and that she really has been "longing and dying to know ever since she was a little, little bit of a girl, and who wouldn't?"

Poor Dorothy! She will "long to know" for many a day yet. And so will the good gentleman who now sits gazing at the fire in the study across the wide hall, his feet on the very rug upon which Nero settled himself on that eventful November day, exactly fourteen years ago.

And so will good, kind Lydia, the housekeeper, and so will Jack, the sailor-coachman, at whom she is always "flaring up," as Dorothy says.

CHAPTER III.

WHICH PARTLY EXPLAINS ITSELF.

Dorothy Reed was of a somewhat livelier temperament than Donald, and that, as she often could not but feel, gave her an advantage. Also, she was ahead of him in history, botany, and rhetoric. Donald, though full of boyish spirit, was steadier, more self-possessed than Dorothy, and in algebra and physical geography he "left her nowhere," as the young lady herself would tersely confess when in a very good humor. But never were brother and sister better friends. "She's first-rate," Don would say, confidentially, to some boon companion, "not a bit like a girl, you know,—more like—well, no, there's nothing tomboyish about her, but she's spirited and never gets tired or sickish like other girls." And many a time Dorothy had declared to some choice confidential friend of the twining-arms sort, that Donald was "perfectly splendid! nicer than all the boys she ever had seen, put together."

On one point they were fully united, and that was in their love for Uncle George, though of late it seemed that he was constantly making rough weather for them.

This expression, "rough weather," is not original, but is borrowed from Sailor Jack, whom you soon shall know nearly as well as the two D's did.

And "the two D's" is not original either. That is Liddy's. She called Donald and Dorothy "the two D's" for brevity's sake, when they were not present, just as she often spoke of the master of the house, in his absence, as "Mr. G." There was no thought of disrespect in this. It was a way that had come upon her after she had learned her alphabet in middle life, and had stopped just at the point of knowing or guessing the first letter of a word or a name. Farther than that into the paths of learning, Liddy's patience had failed to carry her. But the use of initials she felt was one of the short cuts that education afforded. Besides, the good soul knew secrets which, without her master's permission, nothing would induce her to reveal. So, to speak of "Mr. G." or "the D's," had a confidential air of mystery about it that in some way was a great relief to her.

Mr. George was known by his lady friends as "a confirmed bachelor, but a most excellent man," the "but" implying that every well-to-do gentleman ought to marry, and "the excellent man" referring to the fact that ever since the children had been brought to him, fourteen years before, two helpless little babies, he had given them more than a father's care. He was nearly fifty years of age, a tall, "iron-gray" gentleman, with the courtliest of manners and the warmest of hearts; yet he was, as Liddy described him to her cousins, the Crumps, "an unexpected kind o' person, Mr. G. was. Just when you made up your mind he was very stiff and dignified, his face would light up into such a beautiful glow! And then, when you thought how nice, and hearty, and sociable he was, he would look so grave out of his eyes, and get so straight in the back that he seemed like a king in an ermine robe."

When Liddy had compared a man to "a king in an ermine robe," she had expressed her utmost pitch of admiration. She had heard this expression long ago in a camp-meeting discourse, and it seemed to her almost too grand a phrase for human use, unless one were speaking of Mr. George.

And a king Mr. George was, in some ways; a king who ruled himself, and whose subjects—Mr. George's traits of character—were loyal to their sovereign. Yet on one point he did deserve to be otherwise compared. All difficulties that were under his power to control he would bravely meet; but when anything troubled him which he could not remedy,—in fact, on occasions when he was perplexed, worried, or unable to decide promptly upon a course of action,—he often was a changed being. Quick as a flash the beautiful, genial glow would vanish, the kingly ermine would drop off, and he could be likened only to one of the little silver owls that we see upon dinner-tables, quite grand and proper in bearing, but very peppery within, and liable to scatter the pepper freely when suddenly upset.

Poor Dorry! It had been her sad experience to call forth this catastrophe very often of late, and in the most unexpected ways. Sometimes a mere gesture, even the tone of her voice, seemed to annoy her uncle. On one occasion, while he was pleasantly explaining some public matter to Donald and herself, she laid her hand gently upon the back of his, by way of expressing her interest in the conversation, and his excited "Why did you do that?" made the poor girl jump from him in terror.

Lydia, who was softly brushing the fireplace at that moment, saw it all, and saw, too, how quickly he recovered himself and spoke kindly to the child. But she muttered under her breath, as she went slowly down to the basement,—

"Poor Mr. G's gettin' worse of late, he is. I don't see as he ever will feel settled now. It's amazin' puzzlin', it is."

Yes, it was puzzling. And nobody better understood and pitied the kingly soul's perplexity than the good woman. Even Jack, the coachman, though he knew a good deal, had but a faint idea of what the poor gentleman suffered.

On the day when we saw Donald and Dorothy perched on the sofa, Mr. Reed had been remarkably changeful, and they had been puzzled and grieved by his manner toward Dorothy. He had been kind and irritable by turns, and finally, for some unaccountable reason, had sharply requested her to leave him, to "go away for mercy's sake," and then she had been recalled on some slight pretext, and treated with extra kindness, only to be wounded the next moment by a look from her uncle that, as she afterward declared, "made her feel as if she had struck him."

Donald, full of sympathy for Dorry, yet refusing to blame Uncle George without a fuller understanding of the matter, had followed his sister into the parlor, and there they had tried in vain to solve the mystery. For a mystery there evidently was. Dot was sure of it; and Donald, failing to banish this "foolish notion," as he called it, from Dot's mind, had ended by secretly sharing it, and reluctantly admitting to himself that Uncle George, kind, good Uncle George, really had not, of late, been very kind and good to Dorry.

"He hasn't been ugly," thought Donald to himself, while Dorothy sat there, eagerly watching her brother's countenance,—"Uncle couldn't be that. But he seems to love her one minute, and be half afraid of her the next—no, not exactly afraid of her, but afraid of his own thoughts. Something troubles him. I wonder what in the world it is! May be—"

"Well?" exclaimed Dorry, impatiently, at last.

"Well," repeated Don, in a different tone, "the fact is, it is trying for you, Dorry, and I can't make it out."

Meanwhile Lydia, down stairs, was working herself into what she called "a state" on this very matter. "It isn't Christian," she thought to herself, "though if ever a man was a true, good Christian, Mr. G. is; but he's amazin' odd. The fact is, he doesn't know his own mind in this business from one day to the next, and he thinks, Jack and I are stone blind—Mercy! If here don't come those precious children!"

Surely enough, the precious children were on their way down the kitchen stairs. They did not go into that cheerful, well-scrubbed apartment, however, but trudged directly into the adjoining room, in which Liddy, guarded by the faithful old dog, Nero, was now seated, peeling apples. It had been fitted up for Lydia years before when, from a simple housemaid, she was "promoted," as she said, "to have eyes to things and watch over the D's."

"You may think it strange," she had said, grandly, that very morning, to Jack, looking around at the well-polished, old-fashioned furniture, and the still bright three-ply carpet, "that I should have my sitting-room down here, and my sleeping apartment up stairs, but so it is. The servants need watching more than the children, as you know, Mr. Jack, and I've had to have eyes to things ever since the D's first came. Master Donald says I ought to call it 'having an eye,' but sakes! what would one eye be in a house like this? No, it's eyes I want, both eyes, and more too, with the precious D's wild as young hawks, and Mr. G. as he is of late, and the way things are."

Lydia looked up when Donald and Dorothy entered, with a "Sakes! You've not been fretting again, Miss Dorry?"

"No—not exactly fretting, Liddy; that is, not very much. We just came down to—to— Give me an apple?"

"Steady! St-e-a-dy!" cried Liddy, as after her hearty "help yourselves," the brother and sister made a simultaneous dash at the pan on her ample lap, playfully contesting for the largest. "One would think you were starving."

"So we are, Liddy," said Dorothy, biting her apple as she spoke; "we are starving for a story."

"Yes!" echoed Donald, "a story. We're bound to have it!"

"Hum!" muttered Liddy, much flattered. "Do you know your lessons?"

"Per-fectly!" answered the D's, in one breath. "We studied them right after Dr. Lane left."

"Well," began Liddy, casting a furtive look at the old mahogany clock on the mantel; "which story do you want? You've heard 'em all a score of times."

"Oh, not that kind," said Dorothy, playfully motioning to her brother, for you see by this time she was quite cheerful again. "We want a certain par-tic-ular story, don't we, Don?"

Instead of replying, Don took Dorry's outstretched hand with nonsensical grace, and so dancing to the fireplace together, in a sort of burlesque minuet, they brought back with them two little mahogany and hair-cloth foot-benches, placing them at Lydia's feet.

Ignoring the fact that these well-worn seats were absurdly low and small, the D's settled themselves upon them as comfortably as in the days gone by, when the benches had been of exactly the right size for them; and at the risk of upsetting the apples, pan and all, they leaned toward Liddy with an expressive "Now!"

All this had been accomplished so quickly, that Liddy would have been quite taken by surprise had she not been used to their ways.

"Bless your bright eyes!" she laughed, uneasily looking from one beaming face to the other; "you take one's breath away with your quick motions. And now what certain, special, wonderful kind of a story do you want?"

"Why, you know. Tell us all about it, Lydia," spoke Dorothy, sobered in an instant.

"Sakes! Not again? Well, where shall I begin?"

"Oh, at the very beginning," answered Donald; and Dorothy's eager, expressive nod said the same thing.

"Well," began Lydia, "about fourteen years ago—"

"No, no, not there, please, but 'way, away back as far as you can remember; farther back than you ever told us before."

"Well," and Lydia proceeded to select a fresh apple and peel it slowly and deliberately; "well, I was once a young chit of a girl, and I came to this house to live with your Aunt Kate. She wasn't any aunt then, not a bit of it, but a sweet, pretty, perky, lady-girl as ever was; and she had" (here Liddy looked sad, and uttered a low "Dear, dear! how strange it seems!")—"she had two splendid brothers, Mr. George Reed and Mr. Wolcott Reed (your papa, you know). Oh, she was the sweetest young lady you ever set eyes on! Well, they all lived here in this very house,—your grandpa and grandma had gone to the better world a few years before,—and Master G. was sort of head of the family, you see, as the oldest son ought to be."

Donald unconsciously sat more erect on his bench, and thrust his feet farther forward on the carpet.

"Yes, Master G. was the head," Liddy went on, "but you wouldn't have known it, they were all so united and loving-like. Miss Kate, though kind of quick, was just too sweet and good for anything,—'the light of the house,' as the young master called her, and—"

"YOU'VE HER SHINING DARK HAIR, MASTER DONALD," SAID LIDDY

"Oh, I do love so much to hear about Aunt Kate!" exclaimed Dorothy, her color brightening as she drew her bench up still closer to Liddy. Both of the apples were eaten by this time, and the D's had forgotten to ask for more. "Do we look like her?"

Here Donald and Dorothy turned and gazed full in Lydia's face, waiting for the answer.

"Well, yes—and no, too. You've her shining dark hair, Master Donald, and her way of steppin' firm, but there isn't a single feature like her. And it's so with you, Miss Dorry, not a feature just right for the likeness; still you've a something, somehow—somewhere—and yet I can't place it; it's what I call a vanishin' likeness."

At this the two D's lost their eager look, and burst into a hearty laugh.

"Hello, old Vanisher!" said Donald, making a sudden dive at Dorothy.

"Hello, old Stiff-legs!" retorted Dorothy, laughing and pushing him away.

Here old Nero roused himself, and growled a low, rumbling, distant growl, as if protesting against some unwelcome intruder.

"There, children, that's sufficient!" said Liddy, with dignity. "Don't get tussling. It isn't gentleman-and-lady-like. Now see how you've tumbled your sister's hair, Master Donald, and Mr. G.'s so particular. Hear Nero, too! Sakes! it seems sometimes like a voice from the dead to hear him go that way when we're talking of old times."

"Be still, old fellow!" cried Donald, playfully. "Don't you see Liddy's talking to us? Well, we look like our mamma, any way,—don't we, Liddy?"

"That picture of your mamma in your room, Master Donald," replied Lydia, "has certainly a good deal of your look, but I can't say from my own knowledge that it ever was a good likeness. It was sent over afterward, you know, and your mamma never was here except once, and then it so happened I was off to camp-meeting with Cousin Crump. Your papa used to go to see the young lady down at her home in New York, and after the wedding they went to Niagara Falls, and after that to Europe. Seems to me this going out of your own country's a bad business for young couples who ought to settle down and begin life." (Here Nero stood up, and his growl grew more decided.) "Well, as I was saying—Mercy on us! If there isn't that man again!"

The last part of Lydia's sentence, almost drowned by Nero's barking, was addressed to the empty window; at least it was empty when the D's turned toward it.

"Who? where?" shouted Dorothy. But Donald sprang up from the bench, and, followed by the noisy old Nero, ran out of the room, across the basement-hall, and through the back-door, before Lydia had time to reply.

"Who was it, Liddy?" asked Dorry, still looking toward the empty window, while Nero came sauntering back as though the matter that had lured him forth had not been worth the trouble of following up.

"Oh, no one, dearie," said Lydia, with assumed carelessness; "that is, no one in particular. It's just a man. Well, as I was saying, your Aunt Kate wasn't only the light of the house, she was the heart of the house, too, the very heart. It was dreary enough after she went off to England, poor darling."

"Yes, yes, go on," urged Dorry, earnestly, at the same time wondering at her brother's hasty departure. "Go on, Liddy, that's a dear. I can repeat it all to Donald, you know."

"There isn't any more, Miss Dorry. That's the end of the first part of the story. You know the second well enough, poor child, and sad enough it is."

"Yes," said Dorry, in a low tone, "but tell me the rest of the beginning."

"Why, what do you mean, Miss Dorry? There's nothing else to tell,—that is, nothing that I got ear of. I suppose there were letters and so on; in fact, I know there were, for many a time I brought Mr. George's mail in to him. That day, I took the letters and papers to Mr. G. in the library,—poor, lonely gentleman he looked!—and then I went down to my kitchen fire (I was in the housework then), and some minutes after, when I'd been putting on coal and poking it up bright, it kind o' struck me that the master's bell had been ringing. Up I hurried, but when I reached the library, he was gone out, and no one was there but Nero (yes, you, old doggie!), lying before the fire, as if he owned the house. And that's the end of the first part, so far as I know."

"Yes," persisted Dorothy; "but I want to hear more about what happened before that. I know about our poor papa dying abroad, and about the wreck, and how our mamma and—"

She could not go on. Often she could speak of all this without crying; but the poor girl had been strained and excited all the afternoon, and now, added to the sorrow that surged through her heart at the sudden thought of the parents whom she could not even remember, came the certainty that again she was to be disappointed. It was evident, from Lydia's resolute though kindly face, that she did not mean to tell any more of the first half of the story.

The good woman smoothed Dorothy's soft hair gently, and spoke soothingly to her, begging her to be a good girl and not cry, and to remember what a bright, happy little miss she was, and what a beautiful home she had, and how young folk ought always to be laughing and skipping about, and—

"Liddy!" said Donald, suddenly appearing at the door. "Uncle wishes to see you."

Lydia, flushing, set down the pan, and, hurriedly smoothing her apron, walked out of the room.

"Uncle called me from the window—that's why I stayed," explained Donald, "and he told me to bid Jack hitch the horses to the big carriage. We're to get ready for a drive. And then he asked me where you were, and when I told him, he said: 'Send Lydia here, at once.'"

"Was Uncle very angry, Donald?" asked Dorry, wiping her eyes.

"Oh, no. At first he seemed sorry, and I think he got up the drive just to give you pleasure, Dorry. He wanted to see me about something, and then he asked more about our visit to Liddy's room, and I told him she was only telling us a true story about him and our father, and—and that's when he sent me for Liddy, before I could say another word. Don't cry any more, Dot,—please don't. Go put on your things, and we'll have a gay old drive with Uncle. I'll not take the pony this time."

"Oh, do!" coaxed Dorry, faintly, for in her heart she meant, "Oh, don't!" It was good in Donald, she knew, to be willing to give up his pony-ride, and take a seat in the stately carriage instead of cantering alongside, and she disliked to rob him of the pleasure. But to-day her heart was lonely; Uncle had been "queer," and life looked so dark to her in consequence, that to have Donald on the same seat with her would be a great comfort.

"No," said Don. "Some day, soon, you and I will take our ponies, and go off together for a good run; but to-day I'd rather go with you in the carriage, Dot,"—and that settled it.

She ran to put on her hat and bright warm woollen wrap, for it was early November, and beginning to be chilly. The carriage rolled to the door; Uncle George, grave but kind, met her, handed her in as though she were a little duchess, and then said:—

"Now, Dorothy, who shall go with us, to-day? Cora Danby or Josie? You may call for any one you choose."

"Oh, may I, Uncle? Thank you! Then we'll invite Josie, please."

Her troubles were forgotten; Uncle smiling; Donald beside her, and Josephine Manning going with them; the afternoon bright and glowing. Things were not so bad, after all.

"Drive to Mr. Manning's, John," said Mr. Reed, as Jack, closing the carriage-door, climbed up to the box in a way that reminded one of a sailor's starting to mount a ship's rigging.

"Ay, ay, Capt'n," said Jack, and they were off.

CHAPTER IV.

THE DRIVE.

Josie Manning was not at home, when the carriage stopped at her door; and so the party decided to drive on without company.

It was a beautiful autumnal day, and the modest little lakeside village, which, in deference to its shy ways, we shall call Nestletown, did its best to show its appreciation of the weather. Its windows lighted up brilliantly in the slanting sunlight, and its two spires, Baptist and Methodist, reaching up through the yellow foliage, piously rivalled each other in raising their shining points to the sky. The roads were remarkably fine at that time; yet it seemed that almost the only persons who, on this special afternoon, cared to drive out and enjoy them were our friends in the open carriage.

The fine old equipage rolled along at first without a sound beyond the whir of its wheels and the regular quadruple beat of the horses' hoofs; and everything appeared to be very placid and quiet. But how many interests were represented, and how different they were!

First, the horses: while vaguely wishing Jack would loosen his hold, and that the hard iron something in their mouths would snap in two and relieve them, they were enjoying their own speed, taking in great draughts of fine air, keeping their eyes open and their ears ready for any startling thing that might leap from the rustling bushes along the drive, or from the shadows of the road-side trees, and longing in an elegant, well-fed way for the plentiful supper that awaited them at home. Next was the group of little belated insects that, tempted by the glittering sunlight, happened to go along, alighting now on the carriage, now on Jack, and now on the horses. Not being horseflies, they were not even noticed by the span,—yet they had business of their own, whatever it could have been so late in the season, and were briskly attending to it. Next, there was Jack,—good sailor Jack,—sitting upright, soberly dressed in snug-fitting clothes, and a high black stove-pipe hat, when at heart he longed to wear his tarpaulin and move about on his sea-legs again. His only consolation was to feel the carriage roll and pitch over the few uneven places along the road, to pull at his "tiller-ropes," as he called the reins, and "guide the craft as trim" as he could. Honest Jack, though a coachman now (for reasons which you shall know before long), was a sailor at heart, and followed his old ways as far as his present situation would allow. At this very moment he was wondering at his own weakness "in turning himself into a miserable land-lubber, all for love of the capt'n and the two little middies." Meantime, Donald was divided between random boy-thoughts on one side, and a real manly interest in Dorothy, whose lot seemed to him decidedly less pleasant than his own. Dorry was quietly enjoying the change from keen grief to its absence, and a sense of security in being so near Uncle and Donald. And the uncle—what shall I say of him? Shall I describe only the stately form, the iron-gray hair, the kindly face brightened by the yellow afternoon light?—or shall I tell you of the lately happy, but now anxious, troubled man, who within a few days had been made to feel it possible that the dearest thing he had on earth might soon be his no longer.

"Oh, Uncle," said Dorry, suddenly, "I forgot to tell you something!"

"You don't say so!" exclaimed Mr. George, in playful astonishment, a quick smile rising to his lips, and his eyes full of pleasant inquiry. "What did my little maid forget to tell me?"

"Why, about the man on the croquet-ground. I was practising a roquet-shot, and before I knew it, he was close by me, a great, tall, lanky man, calling me 'Sis' and—"

"The rascal!" exclaimed Uncle George, growing red and angry in a moment. "And what business had you to—"

"I didn't, Uncle, I didn't. I'm too old to be called 'Sis,' and he acted just as if I ought to know him, and be real pleasant. I wouldn't have a word to say to him, but just turned around and ran to look for Donald. Didn't I, Don?"

"Yes," said Donald, but before he said it he had scowled, and nodded to his uncle, slyly as he thought, but his sister's eyes were keen.

"I declare, it's too bad!" broke forth Dorry, impetuously. "Everybody gets mad at me for nothing, and makes signs and everything!" and with this incoherent speech Dorry began to pout—yes, actually to pout, the brave, good Dorry, who usually was sunny and glad, "the light of the house," as her Aunt Kate had been before her! Donald stared at her in astonishment.

At this moment, one of the horses received a cut which he certainly did not deserve, but otherwise all was quiet on the coachman's box. No one looking up at that placid, well-dressed back would have dreamed of the South-Sea tempest raging under the well-padded and double-buttoned coat.

"Dorothy," said her uncle, with a strange trembling in his voice, "try to control yourself. I do not blame you, my child. John, you may drive toward home."

Poor Dorry stifled her rising sobs as well as she could, and, sitting upright, drew as far from her uncle as the width of the seat would allow. But after a while, sending a sidelong glance in his direction, she edged slowly back again, and timidly leaned her head upon his shoulder. In a moment his arm was about her, and she looked up saucily, with eyes sparkling through her tears.

"April weather to-day, isn't it, Don?" said Uncle. Don laughed. The uncle laughed, though not so cheerily as Don, and even Jack chuckled softly to himself to think that "all was well again abaft."

"Spoiled child!" said Uncle George, patting her gently. But his heart was full of a wild terror, and he reproached himself for many things, chief among which was that he had made it possible for the idolized little girl beside him to know a moment's sorrow.

"I must be more watchful after this," he said to himself, "and more even-tempered. I have acted like a brute to-day; what wonder the little maid is upset. But that rascal! I shall have to warn the children, though it's an ugly business. Donald," said he aloud, and with gentle dignity, "come into the library after supper, both you and Dorothy."

THE END OF THE DRIVE.

"Yes, sir," said Donald, respectfully.

And as the dear home-road came in sight, the horses quickened their already brisk pace, the party leaned back luxuriously and gave themselves up to enjoyment of the clear air, the changing roadside, and the glories of the western sky, now ablaze with the setting sun.

No one excepting Jack saw a tall, lank figure disappearing among the shrubbery as the carriage rumbled down the avenue that led to the house.

"Look to wind'ard, Capt'n!" whispered Jack, mysteriously, to Mr. George, while Donald was gallantly assisting Dorothy from the carriage; "there's mischief in the air."

"What now, John?" asked Mr. George, rather patronizingly.

"A queer craft's just hove to, sir, in the evergreen bushes as we came in," mumbled Jack, almost under his breath, while pretending to screw the handle of his whip.

Mr. George scowled. "Is he there now?"

"Can't say, sir."

"Very well; I will soon find out." And Mr. George, with a pleasant but decisive, "Run in, youngsters," as Liddy opened the wide hall-door, walked briskly down the carriage-drive.

When the door closed, he turned into the shrubbery.

CHAPTER V.

SUPPER-TIME.

"Oh, if gentlemen only knew the nature of muffins!"

Poor Liddy! Her trig black dress and jaunty muslin cap seemed to mock her perturbed feelings, as she hovered between the kitchen and the hall door. Donald and Dorothy, neatly brushed,—cool and pink of cheek, and very crisp in the matter of neck-ties,—stood at one window of the supper-room. The flaxen-haired waitress, in a bright blue calico gown and white apron, watched, tray in hand, at the other. A small wood-fire, just lighted, was waking into life on the hearth. Old Nero was dozing upon the rug, with one eye open. And all—to say nothing of the muffins—were waiting for Mr. George, whom the D's had not seen since their return from the drive, half an hour before.

When that gentleman came in he stepped briskly to his seat at the table, and, though he did not speak, his manner seemed to say: "Everything is all right. I merely came in a little late. Now for supper!" But Nero, rising slowly from the warm rug, slipped under the table, rubbed himself sympathetically against his master's legs, and finally settled down at his feet, quite contented to serve as a foot-stool for Donald and Dorothy, who soon were seated one on each side of the table, while Lydia, carefully settling her gown, took her place at the large tea-tray.

Mr. George, as the good housekeeper soon saw to her satisfaction, did appreciate the nature of muffins.

So did Donald and Dorothy.

CHAPTER VI.

A FAMILY CONFERENCE.

After supper, Uncle George, Donald, and Dorothy went into the library, where they found the soft light of a shaded lamp and another cheerful fire,—so cheerful, that Mr. George let down the windows at the top, and the two D's were glad to go and sit on the sofa at the cooler end of the spacious room.

"Liddy is determined that we shall not freeze before the winter sets in," remarked Mr. George, hardly knowing how to begin the conversation. He was not the first good man who has found himself embarrassed in the presence of frank young listeners waiting to hear him speak and sure to weigh and remember everything he may say.

The children smiled solemnly.

Thus began an interview which, in some respects, changed the lives of Donald and Dorothy.

"Liddy is a good, faithful soul," said Uncle George. "She has been with us, you know, ever since you were babies."

"And before too," put in Dorry, knowingly.

"Yes, before too," assented Mr. George. "Some years before."

Nero, lazing by the fire, snapped at an imaginary fly, at which the D's, glad of a chance to relieve themselves, and feeling that the interview was one of grave importance, indulged in a smothered laugh.

"And Nero, poor faithful old dog, you knew us!" continued Mr. George, changing to a more cheerful tone, while Nero's tail contentedly beat time to the remark (for the good creature knew well enough that Mr. George was speaking of him); "he was hardly a year old then, the friskiest, handsomest fellow you ever saw, and brave as a lion."

"Did he know Aunt Kate?" asked the audacious Dorothy.

Donald looked frightened; Uncle George coughed; and just as Dorothy, wretchedly uncomfortable, made up her mind that it was too cruel for anything, never to be able to speak of your own aunty without raising a storm, Mr. George came out of the bright light and seated himself on the sofa between the D's with an arm around each. Dorry, puzzled but almost happy, drew as close as she could, but still sat upright; and Donald, manly boy that he was, felt a dignified satisfaction in his uncle's embrace, and met him with a frank, questioning look. It was the work of an instant. Dorry's startling inquiry still sounded on the firelit air.

"Donald," said Uncle, without replying to Dorry's question. "Let me see. You are now fourteen years old?"

"Fourteen and ten days,—nearly half a month over fourteen," said Dorothy, promptly. "Aren't we, Donald? I'm so glad!"

Donald nodded, and Uncle placidly asked why she was glad.

"Because twins can't boss—I mean domineer—each other. If Don was the least bit older than me—I—me, it wouldn't be half so nice as starting fair and square."

Here she gave a satisfied little cough, and to her great surprise felt her uncle's arm immediately withdrawn.

"Stop your nonsense, Dorothy," said he, almost sternly, "and don't interrupt."

"Now Uncle's afraid again," thought Donald, but he felt so sorry for his sister that he said, in a tone of dignified respect: "Dorry didn't mean to be rude, Uncle."

"No, no. Certainly not," said that very puzzling individual, suddenly resuming his former position, and drawing the little lady toward him. "Where were we? Oh, yes! Fourteen years and ten days, is it?"

"Yes, sir, right to a minute," replied Donald, laughing.

"Well, there is no hurry, I am glad to say. I have been thinking of late, Donald, that a little boarding-school experience is a good thing for a boy."

Dorothy started; but she had resolved rather sullenly that people would have to wait a long while before they should hear another word from her.

"Yes, sir," assented Donald, quickly. It would be glorious to go, he thought, and actually be a boarding-school boy, belonging to a crack base-ball club, a debating society, perhaps even a secret society; to get boxes of fruit and cake from home, and share them with his room-mates; maybe have a fight or two, for a fellow must hold his own, you know;—but then how strange it would be to live without Dorry! Oh, if she only were a boy!

DONALD'S THOUGHTS.

"I'd come home on Thanksgiving and Christmas?" asked Don, following up a rather lonesome feeling.

"Oh, yes! but you're not off yet, my boy. The fact is, I did think seriously of sending you this autumn, and I even looked up a few good places, intending to make a selection. But there's no special hurry. This boarding-school business has its uncomfortable side. It breaks up a household, and makes little sisters lonesome. Doesn't it, Dorry?"

Dorry couldn't speak now, though she tried, and Mr. George considerately went on: "Besides, there's another, a very good reason, why we should wait awhile. You are needed here, Donald, just now."

"Needed here?" thought Dorry. "I should say so!" Uncle might as well remark that the sunshine, or the sky, or the air was needed here as to say that Don was needed. A big tear gathered under her lashes—"Besides, she was no more his little sister than he was her little brother. They were just even halves of each other—so now." And the tear went back.

Meantime, Uncle's remarks flowed slowly on, like a deep stream passing between two banks—one with its sunny leaves and blossoms all astir in the breeze, the other bending, casting its image in the stream, and so going on with it in a closer companionship.

"You are needed here, Donald; but, as I said before, there is plenty of time. And though I shall bear this boarding-school matter in mind, I cannot well spare you just now. I shall require, perhaps, some vigilance on your part, and coolheadedness,—not that anything very serious is likely to occur; in fact, there is no reason why it should—but a brother naturally guards his sister even when no danger threatens."

"Certainly," said Don.

"Humph!" thought Dorothy, "I don't want to be guarded, thank you." But, for all that, she felt proud that Uncle should speak of her in this way to Donald. Probably he was going to mention fire, and remind them of the invariable rule that they must not, on any account, carry matches into the barn, or light a bonfire anywhere without express permission. Meanwhile, Donald watched his uncle's face, following every word.

"There is really nothing to be apprehended," continued Uncle George, with some hesitation; "but it is important that you—that Dorothy—I should say—well, my children, perhaps you have observed—indeed, you spoke to-day, Dorothy, of having seen something of a person who has been about here several times of late."

"Oh, yes, Uncle," responded Dorry.

But Donald waited to hear more. He had talked previously with his uncle about this same person, whom he had seen more than once lounging about the grounds.

"Well," said Mr. George, slowly, "this man, 'long and lank,' as Dorry truly described him, is not a very dangerous man,—at least, we'll believe he is not,—but he is one whom I wish you both to avoid. His company will do you no good."

"Wouldn't it be better, Uncle," suggested Dorry, now eager to help matters, "for Jack to order him off the place whenever he comes on?"

"Well, no," said Uncle George. "After all, he may not come again. But if he should, I wish you to have as little to do with him as possible."

"We could set Nero on him. Nero can't bite, but he'd scare him pretty well," insisted Dorry, with animation. "The idea of his calling me 'Sis!' the great, horrid, long—"

"There, there; that will do," said Mr. George. "All you need do is to remember what I say. Do not fear this man. Above all, do not let him imagine that you fear him. But avoid him. Keep within the gates for the present."

"O-h, Uncle!" exclaimed Dorry, in consternation, while even Donald broke forth with a plaintive "Both of us, Uncle?"

"Yes, both of you,—for a few days at least, or until I direct to the contrary. And while out of doors, keep together."

"We'll do that anyway," replied Dorry, half saucily.

"The man," continued Mr. George, "probably will not trouble either of you. He is a ne'er-do-weel, whom I knew as a boy, but we lost sight of him long ago. I suspect he has been steadily going down for years."

"I can't see wh—," began the irrepressible Dorry; but she was met by a firm, "You need not see, nor try to see. Only remember what I have told you, and say nothing to any one about it. Now we may talk of other things. Oh, by the way, there was one pretty good reason for thinking of making a change in schooling. Dr. Lane is going to leave us."

"Dr. Lane going to leave!" echoed Donald, in regretful surprise.

"Good! No more old algebra!" exclaimed Dorry, at the same time clapping her hand to her mouth. Her vivid imagination had instantly pictured relief and a grand holiday. But second thoughts made her feel vexed with herself, especially when her uncle resumed:

"Yes, the good man told me yesterday that his cough grows steadily worse, and his physician has ordered him to go south for the winter. He says he must start as soon as I can find a tutor to take his place."

"Oh, don't let him wait a day, Uncle," exclaimed Dorry, earnestly,—"please don't, if going south will cure him. We've noticed his cough, haven't we, Don? We can study our lessons by ourselves, and say them to each other."

Some boys would have smiled knowingly at this somewhat suspicious outburst, but Donald knew Dorothy too well for that. She was thoroughly sincere and full of sympathy for the kind, painstaking man who, notwithstanding one or two peculiarities which she and her brother could not help observing, was really a good teacher. For more than a year, omitting only July and August, and Saturday holidays, he had been coming to Lakewood every week-day to instruct the two young Reeds in what he called the rudiments of learning. There were two visiting teachers besides Dr. Lane,—the music-master, Mr. Penton, and Mademoiselle Jouvin, the French teacher. These came only twice a week, and on different days, but Dr. Lane and they managed to keep the D's very busy. Mr. Reed had preferred that his nephew and niece should receive their early education at home; and so Donald and Dorothy thus far knew nothing of school life.

What could be the matter with Uncle George? Again Dorothy's look and tone—especially her sudden expression of kindliness for her tutor—evidently had given her uncle pain. He looked down at her for an instant with a piteous and (as Donald again thought) an almost frightened expression; then quickly recovering himself, went on to tell Donald that Dorry was right. It would be best to release Dr. Lane at once, and take the chances of obtaining a new teacher. In fact, he would see the doctor the very next morning, if they would let him know when the lesson-hours were over.

"Uncle!"

"Well, sir, what is it?"

"Did you go to boarding-school, when you were a boy?"

"Oh, yes! but I was older than you are now."

"Did Aunt Kate?" asked Dorry.

"There, there; that will do," was the reply. Uncle George frequently had to say, "There, there; that will do," to Dorry.

"Well," she insisted timidly, and almost in a whisper, "I have to ask about her, because you wasn't a girl,"—Donald, reaching behind Mr. George, tried to pull her sleeve to check the careless grammar, but her soul had risen above such things,—"you wasn't a girl,—and I don't expect to go to a boys' boarding-school. Oh, Uncle, I don't, I really don't mean to be naughty, but it's so hard, so awfully hard, to be a girl without any mother! And when I ask about her or Aunt Kate, you always—yes, Uncle, you really do!—you always get mad. Oh, no, I don't mean to say that; but it makes you feel so dreadfully sorry, that you don't know how it sounds to me! You actually don't, Uncle. If I only could remember Mamma! But, of course, I can't; and then that picture that came to us from England looks so—so very—"

"It's lovely!" exclaimed Donald, almost indignantly.

"Yes, it's handsome, but I know Mamma wouldn't look that way now. It's so pale and stiff. May be it's the big lace collar,—and even Liddy can't tell me whether it was a good likeness or not. But Aunt Kate's picture in the parlor is so different. I think it's because it was painted when she was a little girl. Oh, it's so sweet and natural, I want to climb up and kiss it! I really do, Uncle. That's why I want to talk about her, and why I love her so very much. You wouldn't speak cross to her, Uncle, if she came to life and tried to talk to you about us. No, I think you'd—Oh, Uncle, Uncle! What is the matter? What makes you look so at me!"

Before Dorry fairly knew what had happened, Donald was at his uncle's feet, looking up at him in great distress, and Uncle George was sobbing! Only for an instant. His face was hidden in his hands, and when he lifted it, he again had control of himself, and Dorry almost felt that she had been mistaken. She never had seen her uncle cry, or dreamed that he could cry; and now, as she stood with her arms clasped about his neck, crying because he had cried, she could only think, with an awed feeling, of his tenderness, his goodness, and inwardly blame herself for being "the hatefullest, foolishest girl in all the world." Glancing at Donald, sure of his sympathy, she whispered, "I'm sorry, Uncle, if I did wrong. I'll try never, never to be so—so—" She was going to say "so wicked again," but the words would not come. She knew that she had not been wicked, and yet she could not at first hit upon the right term. Just as it flashed upon her to say "impetuous," and not to care a fig if Donald did secretly laugh at her using so grand an expression, Mr. George said, gently, but with much seriousness:

"You need not reproach yourself, my child. I can see very clearly just what you wish to say. Don and I can rough it together, but you, poor darling," stroking her hair softly, "need just what we cannot give you,—a woman's, a mother's tenderness."

"Oh, yes, you do! Yes, you do, Uncle!" cried Dorothy, in sudden generosity.

"And it is only natural, my little maid, that you should long—as Donald must, too—to hear more of the mother whom I scarcely knew, whom, in fact, I saw only a few times. Wolcott, I should say, your Papa, and she sailed for Europe soon after their marriage, and from that day we never—"

He checked himself, and Dorry took advantage of the pause to say, timidly:

"But it wasn't so with Aunt Kate. You knew her, Uncle, all her life. Wasn't she sweet, and lovely, and—"

"Yes, yes! Sweet, lovely, everything that was noble and good, dear. You cannot love her too well."

"And Papa," spoke up Donald, sturdily, "he was perfect. You've often told us so,—a true, upright, Christian gentleman." The boy knew this phrase by heart. He had so often heard his uncle use it, in speaking of the lost brother, that it seemed almost like a part of his father's name. "And Mamma we know was good, Dorry. Liddy says every one liked her ever so much. Uncle George says so too. Only, how can he talk to us about our mother if he hardly knew her? She didn't ever live in this house. She lived in New York; and that made a great difference—don't you see?"

"Yes," admitted Dorry, only half satisfied; "but you would have known her, Uncle George,—yes, known Mamma, and Aunty, and our Uncle Robertson [they had never learned to call that uncle by his first name]—we would have known them all—no, not all, not poor dear Papa, because he never lived to set sail from England, but all the rest, even our dear little cousin, Delia,—oh, wouldn't she be sweet, if we had her now to love and take care of! We should all have known each other ever so well—of course we should—if the ship had landed safe."

"Yes, my darlings, if the ship had not gone down, all would have been very, very different. There would have been a happy household indeed. We should have had more joy than I dare to think of."

"But we have each other now, Uncle," said Dorothy, soothingly and yet with spirit. "It can't be so very miserable and dreadful with you and Donald and me left!"

"Bless you, my little comforter!—No. God be praised, we still have a great deal to be thankful for."

"Yes, and there are Liddy and Jack, and dear old Nero," said Donald, partly because he wished to add his mite toward this more cheerful view of things, but mainly because he felt choked, and it would be as well to say something, if only to prove to himself that he was not giving way to unmanly emotion.

"Oh, yes—Jack!" added Dorry. "If it were not for Jack where should we twins be, I'd like to know!"

Said in an ordinary tone of voice, this would have sounded rather flippant, but Dorry uttered the words with true solemnity.

"I think of that often," said Donald, in the same spirit. "It seems so wonderful, too, that we didn't get drowned, or at least die of exposure, and—"

Dorothy interrupted him with an animated "Yes, indeed! Such little teenty bits of babies!"

"It does seem like a miracle," Uncle George said.

"But Jack," continued Donald, warmly, "was such a wonderful swimmer."

"Yes, and wonderful catcher!" said Dorothy. "Just think how he caught us—Ugh! It makes me shiver to think of being tossed in the air over those black, raging waves. We must have looked like little bundles flying from the ship. Wasn't Jack just wonderful, to hold on to us as he did, and work so hard looking for—for the others, too. Mercy! if we only get our feet wet now, Liddy seems to think it's all over with us,—and yet, look what we stood then! Little mites of babies, soaked to the skin, out in an open boat on the ocean all that terrible time."

"Much we cared for that," was Don's comment. "Probably we laughed, or played pat-a-cake, or—"

"Played pat-a-cake!" interrupted Dorry, with intense scorn of Donald's ignorance of baby ways—"babies only six weeks old playing pat-a-cake! I guess not. It's most likely we kicked and screamed like anything; isn't it, Uncle?"

Uncle nodded, with a strange mixture of gravity and amusement, and Donald added, earnestly:

"Whether we cried or not, Jack was a trump. A real hero, wasn't he, Uncle? I can see him now—catching us; then, when the other boat capsized, chucking us into the arms of some one in our boat, and plunging into the sea to save all he could, but able to get back alone, after all." (The children had talked about the shipwreck so often that they felt as if they remembered the awful scene.) "He was nearly dead by that time, you know."

"Yes, and nearly dead or not, if he hadn't come back," chirped Dorothy, who was growing tired of the tragic side of Donald's picture,—"if he hadn't come back to take charge of us, and take us on board the big ship—"

"The Cumberland," said Don.

"Yes, the Cumberland, or whatever she was called; if the Cumberland had not come along the next day, and Jack hadn't climbed on board with us, and wrapped us in blankets, and fed us and so on, it wouldn't have been quite so gay!"

Now, nothing could have been in worse taste than the conclusion of this speech, and Dorothy knew it; but she had spoken in pure defiance of solemnity. There had been quite enough of that for one evening.

Uncle George, dazed, troubled, and yet in some vague way inexpressibly comforted, was quietly looking first at one speaker, then at the other, when Liddy opened the door with a significant, "Mr. Reed, sir, did you ring?"

Oh, that artful Liddy! Uncle read "bed-time" in her countenance. It was his edict that half-past nine should be the hour; and the D's knew that their fate was sealed.

"Good-night, Uncle!" said Donald, kissing his uncle in good, hearty fashion.

"Good-night, Uncle!" said Dorothy, clinging to his neck just an instant longer than usual.

"Good-night, my blessings!" said Uncle George, reluctantly. And as he closed the library door behind them, Nero, shut up in Liddy's room, was barking furiously.

Two more orderly, well-behaved young persons never left an apartment. But I must tell the truth: when they were fairly in the hall, Donald started to go up stairs on the outside, holding on to the balusters, and Dorry ran to the front door, in spite of Liddy's remonstrances, with a frisky, "Oh, do let me have just one breath of fresh air!"

She came back instantly, rushed past Lydia, who was slowly puffing her way up the stairs, met Donald at the first landing (he had condescended by this time to leap over to the regulation side of the balusters), and whispered:

"Upon my sacred word, I saw him! He's out there standing at the front steps!"

"Uncle ought to know it!" exclaimed Donald, turning to run down again.

But he stopped on the next step, for Mr. George came out from the library, opened the front door, and disappeared.

The two D's stole from their rooms, after Liddy bade them good-night, and sat on the top stair, whispering.

"Why did you open your window just now, Donald?"

"Why, because I wanted to look out, of course."

"Now, Don, I know better. You coughed, just to let Uncle know that you were around, if there should be any trouble. You know you did."

"Well, what if I did?" admitted Donald, unwillingly. "Hark!" and he sprang up, ready for action. "No, he's back. It's Uncle. I say, Dorry, it will come hard on us to stay on this side of the hedge, like sheep. I wonder how long it will last."

"Goodness knows! But he didn't say we couldn't go to the Danbys'. I suppose that's because we can get there by going round the back way."

"I suppose so," assented Donald. "So long as we keep off the public road, it's all right."

"How queer!"

"Yes, it is queer," said Donald. "However, Uncle knows best."

"Dear me, how good we are, all of a sudden!" laughed Dorry; but she kissed Donald soberly for good-night, and after going to bed lay awake for at least fifteen minutes,—a great while for her,—thinking over the events of the day and evening.

CHAPTER VII.

THE DANBYS.

Who were the Danbys?

They were the Reeds' nearest neighbors, and no two households could be more different. In the first place, the Reeds were a small family of three, with four servants; the Danbys were a large family of twelve, with no servants. The Reeds had a spacious country mansion, rich old furniture, pretty row-boats, fine horses, carriages, and abundant wealth; the Danbys had a little house, poor old furniture, one cow, five pigs, one home-made scow, one wheelbarrow, and no money, excepting the very moderate income earned by the father of the family and his eldest boy. There the great contrast ended. The Danbys were thoroughly respectable, worthy and cleanly; the parents, kind and loving souls, could read and write, and the children were happy, obedient and respectful. To be sure, it would have been very hard for the best schoolmaster of the county to parse some of Mrs. Danby's fluent sentences, or to read at a glance Mr. Danby's remarkable penmanship. But that same learned instructor would have delighted in the cleverness of the sons and daughters, had he been so fortunate as to direct their studies. True, the poor little Danbys had enjoyed but a scant and broken schooling; but they were sharp little things, and native wit served them whenever reading, writing, and arithmetic failed. Indeed, the very fact of their intercourse with Donald and Dorothy had done much for their language and deportment. Yet each individual, from the big brother Ben down to the latest baby, had his or her own peculiar character and style, which not twenty Dons and Dorothys could alter.

It was not very difficult, after all, to remember the names of the young Danbys; for Mr. Danby, being a methodical man, had insisted on their being named in alphabetical order and that they each should have two names, so as to give them their choice in after life. Therefore, the first was Amanda Arabella,—at the present stage of our story, a girl of seventeen, with poetical gifts of her own; the second was Benjamin Buster, aged fifteen; the third, Charity Cora, dark-eyed, thoughtful, nearly thirteen, and, the neighbors declared, never seen without a baby in her arms; the fourth, Daniel David, a robust young person of eleven; the fifth, Ella Elizabeth, red-haired, and just half-past nine, as she said; next came Francis Ferdinand, or "Fandy," as he was called for short, who, though only eight, was a very important member of the family; next, Gregory George, who was six. And here the stock of double names seems to have given out; for after Master Gregory came plain little Helen, aged four; Isabella, a wee toddler "going on three;" and last of all, little Jamie, "the sweetest, cunningest little baby that ever lived." So now you have them all: Amanda Arabella, Benjamin Buster, Charity Cora, Daniel David, Ella Elizabeth, Francis Ferdinand, Gregory George, Helen, Isabella, and roly-poly Jamie. If you cannot quite remember all the children, who can blame you? Even Mrs. Danby herself, with the alphabet to help her, always had to name them upon her fingers, allowing a child to a finger, and giving Elizabeth and Fandy the thumbs.

The stars of the family, in Donald's and Dorothy's estimation, were Benjamin Buster, who had seen the world already, had enjoyed adventures and hair-breadth escapes, and was now at home for the first time in four years; Charity Cora, whose eager, dark eyes told their own story of patient aspiration; and little Fandy. Mr. Danby was proud of all his children, though perhaps proudest of Baby Jamie because there was no knowing what the child might come to; but Mrs. Danby looked with absolute reverence upon her eldest—Amanda Arabella. "Such a mind as that girl has, Mr. Danby," she would say to her husband, "it isn't for us to comprehend. She might have come just so out of a book, Amanda might." And Mr. Danby would nod a pleased and puzzled assent, vaguely wondering how long he could manage to hold his high parental state over so gifted a creature.

Amanda Arabella's strong points were poetry and sentiment. To be sure, she scrubbed the floor and washed the dishes, but she did these menial duties "with her head in the clouds," as she herself had confessed to her mother. Her soul was above it, and as soon as she could, she intended to "go somewhere and perfect herself." This idea of going somewhere to perfect herself was one which she had entertained in secret for some time, though she had not the slightest idea of where she could go, and in just what way she was to be perfected. She only knew that, at present, housework and the nine brothers and sisters were quite as much as she could attend to, excepting at odd moments when "the poetry fit was on her," as her mother expressed it—"and then wild horses couldn't stop her!"

"I can't deny, Mr. Reed," said that proud mother to her kind neighbor,—who, on the morning after the interview with Donald and Dorothy in his study, had halted at Mrs. Danby's whitewashed gate, to wish her a stately "Good-morning, madam!" and to ask after her family,—"I can't deny, and be honest, that I'm uncommon blest in my children, though the Lord has seen fit to give us more than a extra lot of 'em. They're peart and sound as heart could wish, and so knowin'! Why," she continued, lowering her voice and drawing closer to the gate, "there's my Fandy now, only eight years old, can preach 'most like a parson! It'd rise your hair with surprise to hear him. An' Ben, my oldest boy, has had such adventures, an' haps an' mishaps, as ought to be writ out in a birogrophy. An' there's Amanda Arabella, my daughter—well, if I only could set down the workin's o' my brain as that girl can, I'd do! She has got a most uncommon lively brain. Why, the other day—but all this time you're standin', Mr. Reed. Won't you walk in, sir? Well, certainly, sir, it ain't to be 'xpected you could take time goin' by so, as you are—Well, my 'Mandy, sir, only the other day was a-comin' out into the shed with a pan o' dish-water, and she sees a rainbow. 'Ma!' says she, a-callin' me, 'take this 'ere dish-water!' and before I knowed it, she was a writin' down with her lead-pencil the beautifullest ideas that ever was,—all about that rainbow. In the evening, when her Pa come, I just up and showed it to him, an' he says, says he, 'Them's the grandest thoughts I ever see put to paper!'"

"Ah!" said Mr. Reed, with an expression of hearty interest and amusement on his honest face, yet evidently ready to take advantage of the first opportunity to go on his way.

"Yes, indeed," promptly assented Mrs. Danby, "and she ain't all. Our children, if I do say it, seem to have more brains than they've a fair right to—bein' poor folks' children, as you may say. It don't tire 'em one bit to learn: their Pa says every study they tackle gets the worst of it,—they use it up, so to speak. I dreamed th' other night I see the four English branches, 'rithmetic, writin', readin', and hist'ry, standin' exhausted, waiting for them children to get through with them. But I see you're shifting yourself, sir, for going, and I ought to be ashamed to detain you this way clacking about my own flesh and blood. I've been poorly lately, I didn't tell you, Mr. Reed" (looking at him plaintively).

"No; indeed, I'm very sorry to hear it," said Mr. Reed, sympathetically. "Nothing serious, I hope?"

"Oh, no. One o' my billerous attacks; the spine o' my back seemed to give out somehow, and I was dreadful bad for a couple o' days. But my Thomas an' the children—bless their hearts!—got me up again. You're looking well, Mr. Reed. Good-morning, sir—good-morning!—(Sakes! he went off so sudden I forgot)."

And thus exclaiming to herself, the dear old talker went back into the house.

MRS. DANBY'S DREAM: THE FOUR ENGLISH BRANCHES.

"Forgot what, Ma?" asked Amanda, who stood in the doorway trying to think of a rhyme for olives.

"Why, to tell Mr. Reed about that queer kind of a man, who's just engaged to lodge with us. I don't feel like trustin' him somehow, and yet it isn't for plain folks to be refusing a real boarder who wants a plain family-table, and don't put on any airs. I told him," she continued, going farther into the house, and raising her voice as she increased the distance between herself and Amanda, "that if ours wasn't a family table (with ten children setting 'round it, includin' the baby, and Mr. Danby at the head), I didn't know what was. But he's to come back in an hour or two. Where in the world to tuck him is the question. Anyhow, you'd better go up, dear, and ready brother's room for him. Ben's got two rabbit-skins tacked outside the window which'll have to come down. Ben'll have to go in with Dan and Fandy to sleep.—Mercy! Here come the twins, 'cross-lots!—an' Fandy a preachin' there in the pump-shed!"

True enough, the twins were coming around by the back way. They approached softly, and made a motion of warning to Mrs. Danby, as they drew nearer, for they could hear Fandy Danby's voice, and wished to enjoy the fun. Mrs. Danby, smiling and nodding, pointed to a place where they could stand unobserved and hear the sermon.

It was the hour for the afternoon "cleaning-up." Eight of the little Danbys, including Charity with Baby Jamie in her arms, had assembled to wash their hands and faces at the battered green pump under the shed, where, on a long, low bench, were two yellow earthenware basins, and a saucer containing a few fragments of brown soap, while on the wall hung a roller-towel that already was on very familiar terms with Danby faces and hands. The general toilet had been rather a noisy one, owing partly to the baby objecting to having soap in its eyes, and partly to the fact that too many required the services of the Danby roller at the same instant, to say nothing of Miss Helen insisting upon slapping the water in a most unladylike way, and so splashing Master Gregory.

This combination having brought matters to a crisis, Fandy had been inspired to mount a small step-ladder, and, with many original gestures, address the crowd in the following fashion:—

"Chil'ren! I'm ashamed of you! I don't know when I've been so—so umpressed with the badness of this family. How often, my hearers, do you 'spect me to stop my dressing to extort you! I didn't mean to preach no more sermons this week, but you do behave so awful bad, I must.

"Now, first, don't you know speakin' saucy is a sin? Don't you know it? It makes us hateful, an' it makes us cross, an' it makes people tell Ma. It ain't right for Chrisshen chil'ren to do such things. It don't never say in our Bible-lesson that folks can call peoples 'mean uglies' just for wantin' the roller. An' it don't say that a good Chrisshen child can say 'Pshaw for you!' for havin' not to make quite so much noise, which you, my beloved 'Gory, said just now to Charity.

"Now, we must be good an' perlite, if we want to do right and have things Chrissmas, an' if we want to be loved on earth and in heaven. (No, sir, that ain't talkin' big, and I do know what I mean, too.) I say, we must be perlite. We mussent get mad unless we can't help it. It's natural for big folks to rub our noses the wrong way when they wash our faces, an' to comb hair hard—they're born so. An' all we can do is to be patient, an' wait till we get big an' have chil'ren of our own.

FANDY "PREACHES A SERMON" TO HIS BROTHERS AND SISTERS.

"But what I say—what I mean, what I—what I—(Now you, Gregory, give Helen back her dolly right away, or I'll come down to you!)—what I mean is, that we all ought to be good and perlite. It's wicked to be saucy. We ought to be able to stand one another. An' nudgin' is wicked, an' shovin' is wicked, an' makin' faces ain't the way to do. No more ain't bullyin', nor mockin', nor any of those things. I go in for bein' pleasant and kind, an' havin' fun fair; only, my beloved hearers, I can't do it all alone. If we'd all be good Chrisshen chil'ren, things would go better, an' there wouldn't be such a racket.

"Can't you cleanse your sinful hearts, my hearers?—cleanse 'em, anyhow, enough to behave? Can't you? (Stop your answerin', David; it puts me out, and, besides, you oughtn't to say that. You ought to say 'I'll try.') I notice you ain't none of you real quiet and peaceful, unless I'm preachin', or you're eatin' something good. I also can see two people lookin' through the crack, which I think they'd better come in, as I wouldn't mind it. Now I can't extort you no more this time."

To Fandy's great disgust, the audience applauded the conclusion of his sermon, and were about to become more uproarious than ever, when the sudden appearance of Donald and Dorothy put them upon their good behavior.

"Is Ben here?" asked Donald, after the usual "How-d'ye-do's" were over, and as Fandy was taking a hasty turn at the roller-towel.

"Don't know," said Fandy; "he was mendin' a trap, over there,"—pointing to an enclosed corner close by the house, that had been roughly boarded over and fitted up with bench and table by Master Ben, so as to make a sort of workshop.

They all went over, accompanied by Charity Cora, and were received in Ben's usual style, which consisted in simply ceasing to whistle aloud, though he still held his lips in whistling position while he proceeded with his work.

They watched him in silence for a moment (the young Danbys, at least, knowing that they would be firmly, but not unkindly, ordered off, if they interfered with the business in hand), and then, to their relief, Ben drove in the last nail and laid down the hammer.

"What's that for?—to catch yab-bits?" asked Gregory George, nicknamed 'Gory by his brothers, for the fun of the thing, he was so fair-haired and gentle.

"No; it's to catch little boys," answered Ben, whereat 'Gory grinned, and looked at Don and Dorry to see if they were foolish enough to believe it.

"Well, why don't you act perlite to your comp'ny?" asked Fandy, much shocked at Ben's unconscious want of ceremony.

"Ha, ha!" laughed Ben. "Hallo, Donald!"

Dorry was softly talking to Cora, and at the same time coaxing the baby from its sister's arms.

"Hallo yourself!" was Donald's quick response to Ben. "Did you have any luck last night?"

"Yes, two! Got the skins out drying. Beauties! I say, Donald, can you spare me your gun again, if you're not going to use it Thanksgiving Day?"

"Certainly," answered Don; "you can have it, and welcome. Tyler and I are going to fire at a mark in the afternoon, with Uncle and the girls. But we'll use the rifle for that."

"What girls?" asked Charity Cora, eagerly, hoping, from Donald's plural way of putting it, that she and Ella Elizabeth possibly were to have a share in the sport; whereat Daniel David, guessing her thoughts, answered for Donald, with a cutting, "Why, Queen Victoria and the royal princess, to be sure. Who else could it be?"

Cora made no reply, but, feeling rather ashamed, rubbed her arms (a habit of hers whenever the baby for the moment happened to be out of them), and looked at Donald.

"Josie Manning and Ed Tyler are coming over after dinner," said Donald.

"I should think they'd rather come to dinner," spoke up Ella Elizabeth, with hungry eyes. "Turkeys and things—Oh, my! Punkin pie!"

This called forth two exclamations in a breath:

Dan. David:"'Punkin pie! Oh, my!' We're getting poetical. Call 'Mandy, quick. Punkin pie—sky high."

Fandy:"Don't be so unproper. It's pumpkun pie. Dorothy said so. And, besides, we ought to let the comp'ny do the talking."

"Humph! By this time, we've made them forget what they were talkin' about."

"Not I, Charity," laughed Donald, turning to the latest speaker. "In the first place, Josie and Ed didn't feel like leaving home on Thanksgiving Day till after dinner, and we two fellows are going to teach Josie and Dorry to shoot straight. And" (now addressing Ben, who by this time was wedging the handle of a hammer) "as for the gun, Ben, you're always welcome to it, so long as you return it in as good order as you did last time. You cleaned it better than I do."

"I found the rags," said Helen, slyly,—"ever so many. Didn't I, Ben?"

Ben nodded at her, and Helen, made happy for the whole day, ran off hugging a broken dolly in exact imitation of Charity and Baby Jamie; meanwhile her big brother, pleased at Don's compliments, remarked, "It's a prime gun, and never fails."

"Never fails you, Ben, you may as well say. It often fails me, never mind how carefully I aim."

"That's just it, Donald," said Ben. "There's no good in aiming so particular."

"Well, what's a fellow to do?" replied Donald. "You must take aim, and by the time you get a bird well sighted, he's gone."

"Sight? I never sight," said Ben. "I just fire ahead."

"You don't mean to say you shoot a bird without aiming at him?"

"Oh, well, I aim, of course; but I don't look through the sight, or any such nonsense."

"I don't understand," said Donald, doubtingly.

"Don't you? Why, it's just this: if the bird's flying he'll go ahead, won't he? Well, you fire ahead and meet him,—that's the whole of it. You know how an Indian shoots an arrow. He doesn't look along the line of the arrow for ten minutes, like a city archer; he decides, in a flash, what he's going to do, and lets fly. Practice is the thing. Now, when you're after a wild duck, you can aim exactly at him and he's safe as a turnip; but see a strip of water ahead betwixt the muzzle of your gun and him, and he's a gone bird, if you fire straight. You have to allow for diving—but practice is the thing. Learn by missing."

"Oh, that's good!" shouted Daniel David; "'learn by missing.' I'm going to try that plan in school after this. Don't you say so, Fandy?"

"No, I don't," said the inflexible Fandy, while he gazed in great admiration at the two big boys.

At this point, the mother appeared at the door with an empty pail in each hand, and before she had time to call, David and Fandy rushed toward her, seized the pails, and would have been off together for the well, if Mrs. Danby had not said, "Let David get the water, Fandy, and you bring me some light wood for boiling the kettle."

"You can't boil the kettle, Ma," called out one of the children. "You boil the water."

"No more you can't," assented Mrs. Danby, with an admiring laugh.

All this time, Dorry had been tossing the struggling baby, and finally winning it to smiles, though every fibre in its plump little body was squirming in the direction of Charity Cora. Meanwhile, that much-enduring sister had made several pungent remarks, in a low tone, to her visitor, concerning babies in general and Jamie in particular.

"Now you see how nice it is! He keeps up that wriggling all day. Now it's to come to me; but when I have him, it's wriggling for the chickens, and for Mother, and for everything. And if you set him down out-of-doors he sneezes; and if you set him down in the house he screams; and Ma calls out to know 'if I can't amuse that baby!' I tote him round from morning to night—so I do!"

Here the baby's struggles became so violent and noisy that Charity Cora savagely took him from Dorry; whereat he threw his plump little arms about his sister's neck with such a satisfied baby-sigh that she kissed him over and over, and looked in placid triumph at Dorothy, apparently forgetting that she ever had made the slightest complaint against him.

"Have you begun with your new teacher yet?" she asked, hugging Jamie, and looking radiantly at Dorothy.

"Oh, no!" answered Dorry. "How did you know Dr. Lane was going?"

"Ma heard it somewhere! My, don't I wish I had a teacher to come every day and put me through! I'm just dying to learn things. But something always interferes with my getting to school. There's so much to do in the house; and now that we're to have a boarder there'll be more to do than ever. It's nice to be useful, I s'pose, but I'm really as ignorant, Dorothy Reed, as a—as a baby" (this simile was suggested by little Jamie's busy efforts to pull off her linen collar); "why, do you know, I can't even—"

And here the girls sauntered off together to sit down on a tree-stump, and have a good long talk, if the baby would allow it.

CHAPTER VIII.

TOO MUCH OF A GOOD THING.

Just as Donald and Dorothy were about to end the outdoor visit to the Danbys described in our last chapter, Coachman Jack was seen in a neighboring field, trying to catch Mr. Reed's spirited mare, "Lady," that had been let out to have a run. He already had approached her without difficulty and slipped a bridle over her head, but she had started away from him, and he, feeling that she had been allowed playtime enough, was now bent on recapturing her.

Instantly a dozen Danby eyes were watching them with intense interest. Then Donald and Ben, not being able to resist the impulse, scampered over to join in the race, closely followed by Dan and Tandy. Gregory, too, would have gone, but Charity called him back.

It was a superb sight to see the spirited animal, one moment standing motionless at a safe distance from Jack, and the next, leaping about the field, mane and tail flying, and every action telling of a defiant enjoyment of freedom. Soon, two grazing horses in the same field caught her spirit; even Don's pony, at first looking soberly over a hedge in the adjoining lot, began frisking and capering about on his own account, dashing past an opening in the hedge as though it were as solid a barrier as the rest. Nor were Jack and the boys less frisky. Coaxing and shouting had failed, and now it was an open chase, in which, for a time, the mare certainly had the advantage. But what animal is proof against its appetite? Clever little Fandy had rushed to Mr. Reed's barn, and brought back in his hat a light lunch of oats for the mare, which he at once bore into her presence, shaking it temptingly, at the same time slowly backing away from her. The little midget and his hatful succeeded, where big man and boys had failed. The mare came cautiously up and was about to put her nose into the cap, when Jack's stealthy and sudden effort to seize the bridle made her start sidewise away from him. But here Donald leaped forward at the other side, and caught her before she had time to escape again.

Jack was too proud of Don's quickness to appear surprised; so, disregarding the hilarious shout of the Danby boys, he took the bridle from the young master with an off-hand air, and led the now gentle animal quietly towards the stable.

But Dorothy was there before him. Out of breath after her brisk run, she was panting and tugging at a dusty side-saddle hanging in the harness-room, when Jack and the mare drew near.

"Oh, Jack!" she cried, "help me to get this down! I mean to have some fun. I'm going to ride that mare back to the field!"

"Not you, Miss Dorry!" exclaimed Jack. "Take your own pony, an' your own saddle, an' it's a go; but this 'ere mare'd be on her beam ends with you in no time."

"Oh, no, she wouldn't, Jack! She knows me perfectly. Don't you, Lady? Oh, do, Jack! That's a good Jack. Please let me! Don's there, you know."

Dorry said this as if Don were a regiment. By this time, the side-saddle, yielding to her vigorous efforts, had clattered down from its peg, with a peculiar buckle-and-leathery noise of its own.

"Won't you, Jack? Ah, won't you?"

"No, miss, I won't!" said Jack, resolutely.

"Why, Jack, I've been on her before. Don't you know? There isn't a horse on the place that could throw me. Uncle said so. Don't you remember?"

"So he did!" said Jack, his eyes sparkling proudly. "The Capt'n said them very words. An'," glancing weakly at the mare, "she's standin' now like a skiff in a calm. Not a breath in her sails—"

"Oh, do—do, Jack!" coaxed Dorry, seizing her advantage, "quick! They're all in the lot yet. Here, put it on her!"

"I'm an old fool," muttered Jack to himself, as, hindered by Dorry's busy touches, he proceeded to saddle the subdued animal; "but I can't never refuse her nothin'—that's where it is. Easy now, miss!" as Dorry, climbing up on the feed-box in laughing excitement, begged him to hurry and let her mount. "Easy now. There! You're on, high and dry. Here" (tugging at the girth), "let me tauten up a bit! Steady now! Don't try no capers with her, Miss Dorry, and come back in a minute. Get up, Lady!—get up!"

The mare left the stable so slowly and unwillingly, that Jack slapped her flank gently as she moved off.

Jog, jog went Lady out through the wide stable doorway, across the yard into the open field. Dorry, hastily arranging her skirts and settling herself comfortably upon the grand but dingy saddle (it had been Aunt Kate's in the days gone by), laughed to herself, thinking how astonished they all must be to see her riding Lady back to them. For a moment she playfully pretended to be unconscious of their gaze. Then she looked up.

Poor Dorry! Not a boy, not even Donald, had remained in the field! He and the little Danbys were listening to one of Ben's stories of adventure. Even the two horses and Don's pony were quietly nosing the dry grass in search of green tufts.

"I don't care," she murmured gayly, overcoming her disappointment. "I mean to have a ride, any way. Get up, Lady!"

Lady did get up. She shook her head, pricked up her ears, and started off at a beautiful canter across the fields.

"How lovely!" thought Dorry, especially pleased at that moment to see several figures coming toward her from the Danby yard; "it's just like flying!"

Whether Lady missed her master's firm grip upon the rein, or whether she guessed her rider's thought, and was inspired by the sudden shouts and hurrahs of the approaching boys, can never be known. Certain it is that by the next moment Dorry, on Lady's back, was flying in earnest,—flying at great speed round and round the field, but with never an idea of falling off. Her first feeling was that her uncle and Jack wouldn't be pleased if they knew the exact character of the ride. Next came a sense of triumph, because she felt that Don and the rest were seeing it all, and then a wild consciousness that her hat was off, her hair streaming to the wind, and that she was keeping her seat for dear life.

Lady's canter had become a run, and the run soon grew into a series of leaps. Still Dorry kept her seat. Young as she was, she was a fearless rider, and at first, as we have seen, rather enjoyed the prospect of a tussle with Lady. But as the speed increased, Dorry found herself growing deaf, dumb and blind in the breathless race. Still, if she could only hold on, all would be well; she certainly could not consent to be conquered before "those boys."

Lady seemed to go twenty feet in the air at every leap. There was no merry shouting now. The little boys stood pale and breathless. Ben, trying to hold Don back, was wondering what was to be done, and Charity was wringing her hands.

"Oh, oh! She'll be thrown!" cried the girls.

DONALD TO THE RESCUE.

"Not a bit of it!" insisted Donald. "I've seen Dot on a horse before." But his looks betrayed his anxiety. "See! the mare's trying to throw her now! But she can't do it—she can't do it! Dot understands herself, I tell you,—Whoa-o!—Let me go!" and, breaking from Ben, he tore across the field, through the opening in the hedge, and was on his pony's back in a twinkling. How he did it, he never knew. He had heard Dorry scream, and somehow that scream made him and his pony one. Together, they flew over the field; with a steady, calm purpose, they cut across Lady's course, and soon were at her side. Donald's "Hold on, Dot!" was followed by his quick plunge toward the mare. It seemed that she certainly would ride over him, but he never faltered. Grasping his pony's mane with one hand, he clutched Lady's bridle with the other. The mare plunged, but the boy's grip was as firm as iron. Though almost dragged from his seat, he held on, and the more she struggled, the harder he tugged,—the pony bearing itself nobly, and quivering in eager sympathy with Donald's every movement. Jack and Ben were now tearing across the field, bent on rescue; but they were not needed. Don was master of the situation. The mare, her frolic over, had yielded with superb grace, almost as if with a bow, and the pony was rubbing its nose against her steaming side.

"Good for you, Dot!" was Donald's first word. "You held on magnificently."

Dorothy stroked Lady's hot neck, and for a moment could not trust herself to look up. But when Jack half-pulled, half-lifted her from the saddle, and she felt the firm earth beneath her, she tottered and would have fallen, had not Donald, frightened at her white face, sprung to the ground just in time to support her.

"Shiver my timbers!" growled Jack, "if ever I let youngsters have their way again!" But his eyes shone with a strange mixture of self-reproach and satisfaction as he looked at Dorry.

"Oh, is she hurt?" cried Charity, who, having stumbled with the baby in her rush across the field, was gathering up the screaming little fellow, catching her balance, and scrambling onward at the same time—"Is she hurt?"

"Is she hurt?" echoed the others, pressing forward in breathless excitement.

"Not hurt at all," spoke up Donald, stoutly, as, still supporting his sister, he saw the color coming back to her cheek,—"not hurt one bit! It's only been a splendid ride for her, and a jolly scare for us; but it is high time we were in the house. All's right, Jack. Good-by, everybody! We'll skip along home, now."

CHAPTER IX.

IN WHICH SOME WELL-MEANING GROWN FOLK APPEAR.

McSwiver—better known as "Michael" by the Manning family, or, more descriptively, as "Mr. Manning's Mike," at the village store, but always as "old Mr. McSwiver," by our Liddy—was about to enjoy an evening out. This was a rare occurrence; for Mr. McSwiver, though he had advertised himself as having "no incumbrance," was by no means an ease-taking man. He united in his august person the duties of coachman, butler, waiter, useful man, and body-servant to Mr. Manning. Seeing him at early dawn, blacking his employer's boots, or, later, attending to the lighter duties of the coachhouse (he had a stable-boy to help him), one could never imagine the grandeur of that same useful individual when dressed in his best.

"A hall-door-and-waitin' suit brings out a man's fine points if he has any, so it does; and it's nowise surprisin' that parties callin' after nightfall should be secretly mistakin' me for the boss himself," thought Mr. McSwiver, critically regarding his well-scrubbed countenance in the hall mirror, before starting to make a formal call on his much-admired friend, Liddy.

Half an hour afterward he was stalking from Mr. Reed's garden-gate toward the village store, talking to himself, as usual, for lack of better company:

McSWIVER.

"Humph! Queen Victorior herself couldn't be more high and mighty! and all because her young lady's gone an' had a runaway on horseback! 'Is she kilt?' says I. 'Mercy, no,' says she; 'but I shall be special engaged all the ev'nin', Mr. McSwiver,' says she; and with that she fastens her eyes on me (mighty pooty ones they are, too!) a-noddin' good-by, till I was forced, like, to take meself off. Miss Josephine herself couldn't 'a' been grander to one of them young city swells at the 'cademy! Och, but it beat all!"

Meantime, Liddy had quite forgotten his sudden nipped-in-the-bud visit. Old Mr. McSwiver was well enough in his own way, and at a fitting time, for he knew her cousins the Crumps; but she could not think of society matters so soon after her darling Miss Dorry had been in danger.

"Did you ever know it turn out any other way?" said she confidentially to Donald, on that same evening,—after Dorothy, somewhat subdued by dreadful remarks on the subject of nervous shocks and internal injuries, had retired earlier than usual,—"now, did you, Master Donald? There Mr. G. had been taking extra precautions to keep her safe, and, under a merciful Providence, it was only by the skin of that dear child's teeth that she wasn't sent to a better world! And, do you know, Master Donald, there's been serious goings on here too?"

"Goings on? What do you mean, Liddy?"

"Why, that horrid man came—the very same that looked in at my sitting-room window—and Mr. George opened the door his own self, and spoke very severe to him, and 'I cannot see you to-night,' says he. 'Come on next Monday evening, at half-past nine, and not before.' I heard him say those very words."

Donald looked at her anxiously, but made no reply.

"There's no harm in my telling you," continued Liddy, softly, "because you and Mr. G. and me know about him."

"No, I don't, Liddy. I haven't heard half, and you know it!" was Donald's puzzled and indignant rejoinder. "This being let half-way into a secret doesn't suit me. If Uncle were not busy this evening, I'd go in and speak to him about that fellow at once."

"Oh, hush! please do," whispered Liddy, hurriedly. "Miss Dorry'll hear you. I only meant that you and I both know that he's been hanging about these parts for a week or more, and that his presence doesn't bode any good. Why, you noticed it before anybody else. Besides, I want her to sleep. The darling child! She's feeling worse than she lets on, I'm afraid, though I rubbed her back with liniment to make sure. Please don't talk any more about things now. To-morrow I'll ask your uncle if—"

"No, you needn't, thank you, Liddy," interrupted Don, "I'll speak to him myself."

"Oh my! When?"

"I don't know. When I get ready," he replied, laughing in spite of himself at Lydia's hopeless way of putting the question. "It is sure to come soon. I've had pulls at this tangle from time to time without getting a fair hold of it. But I intend to straighten it out before long, or know the reason why."

"Sakes! What an air he has, to be sure!" thought Liddy, as Donald moved away. "The fact is, that boy's getting big. We older folks'll think of them as children to the end of our days; but it's true as sky and water. And it's even more so with Miss Dorry. Those twins are getting older, as sure as I live!"

Monday evening came, and with it the "long, lank man." He did not come before half-past nine; and then, to Lydia's great disappointment (for she had rather enjoyed the luxury of dreading this mysterious visit), he rang the door-bell like any other visitor, and asked, familiarly, for Mr. Reed.

"Mr. Reed is at home, sir," responded Liddy, in a tone of cold disapprobation.

"All right. You're the housekeeper, I s'pose?"

Trembling within, but outwardly calm, silent, and majestic, Liddy threw open the study-door, and saw Mr. Reed rise to receive his guest.

The good woman's sitting-room was directly under the study. Consequently, the continuous sound of voices overhead soon became somewhat exasperating. But she calmed herself with the thought that Mr. George knew his own business. It was evident that he had something very important to talk over with "that person;" and if, in her desire to know more, a wild thought of carrying in glasses and a pitcher of water did enter her head, it met with such a chilling reception from Liddy's better self that it was glad to creep away again.

This, then, was why Lydia, busily engaged at her little sewing-table, was right glad, late as it was, to see Mr. Jack's shining face and newly-combed locks appear at the sitting-room door.

"Hullo, messmate! My service to you," was that worthy's salutation.

"Good evening, sir," said Lydia, severely. "My name is Blum—Miss Lydia Blum, though you've known it these twelve years, and been told of it twenty times as often."

"Miss Blum, then, at your service," growled Jack, bowing very low, and still remaining near the door. "It struck me, Mistress Blum, that a chap from the fo'castle might drop into your pretty cabin for a friendly chat this fine evening."

"Yes, indeed, and welcome," responded the pacified Miss Blum. "Take a seat, Mr. Jack."

He always was "Mr. Jack," evenings, and she, "Miss Blum," each enjoying the other's society all the more because of the mutual conviction that he was no ordinary coachman, and she was far from being an every-day servant. Kassy, the red-cheeked housemaid, and Norah, the cook, felt this; and though treated kindly by both dignitaries, they accepted their position, knowing well that they were not important members of the family, as Jack and Lydia Blum felt themselves to be.

"Mr. Jack," spoke Lydia, suddenly, "do you know who is up stairs?"

"Ay, ay, ma'am."

"Did you come on that account?"

Here Jack looked knowing, and said she must not question the man on the look-out.

"Not that I've had even a hint of such a thing from the Capt'n;" added Jack, as his companion nodded approvingly; "but your good sailor looks to the scupper before the ship fills—which doesn't apply in partic'lar, but it has its meaning, nevertheless. Young parties turned in, yet?"

"Master Donald and Miss Dorothy have retired, Mr. Jack," corrected Miss Blum, loftily. "That is, I presume so. At any rate, they are in their rooms, bless them!"

"Bless 'em again!" echoed Mr. Jack, heartily, ignoring the reproof. "A smarter, smilinger pair of beauties never came in my range on sea or land. There's Master Donald, now, with the spirit of a man-o'-war in his boy's hull. My, but he's a fine one! And yet so civil and biddable! Always full set when there's fun in the air. Can't tell you, Mistress Blum, how I dote on that 'ere boy. Then there's Miss Dorothy,—the trimmest, neatest little craft I ever see. It seemed, t'other day, that the deck was slippin' from under me, when I see that child scudding 'round the lot on Lady's back. You couldn't 'a' told, at first, whether she was a-runnin' away with Lady, or Lady a-runnin' away with her. But didn't the skeer follow mighty quick! I tell you the wind blew four quarters to once fur a spell, but afore I could get there Master Donald had her. Whew! It was mirac'l'us! Never see such a boy—no, nor girl neither—as them two twins!"

"Nor I," said Liddy, fervently.

"And what babbies they were!" proceeded Jack. "I can see 'em now, as I first saw 'em after the wreck,—poor, thin, pinched mites, 'most sneezin' their little heads off. And then, when you took hold on 'em, Mistress Blum, with your tender care, night an' day, day an' night, always studyin' their babby naturs so partic'lar and insistin' upon their havin' their grog from one tap—"

"Mr. Jack, I'm ashamed of you! How often I've requested you not to put it that way! Milk from one cow is a common-sense rule. Every one knows that babies brought up by hand must be treated just so particular. Well, they throve on it, didn't they?"—her eyes kindling.

"Throve, my hearty?—ahem; beg parding! Throve! Why, they just bounded! I never see anything like it! The brightest, liveliest little pair o' sea-gulls I ever set eyes on; an' grow? Grow, Miss Blum? Well, throw me to the sharks if ever I see anything grow like them babbies!"

"Didn't they!" exclaimed Miss Blum, so happy in recalling her success with the "dear, darling little D's" that she quite forgot to check Mr. Jack's inelegance "Ah, many a time I used to stand and wonder at them when I should have been workin'! It seemed to me as if they improved hourly. Why, do you know, Mr. Jack—"

A bell rang violently, as if some one were in trouble.

"I USED TO STAND AND WONDER AT THEM, WHEN I SHOULD HAVE BEEN WORKIN'."

"It's the master!" cried Liddy, and as she sprang up the stairs, Jack followed her rapidly and lightly on tiptoe.

But it was not Mr. George at all. When Liddy hastily opened the library door, with a "Did you ring, sir?" and Mr. Reed responded with a surprised "No, thank you!" while the visitor coolly stared at her, the good woman ran up to the second story to inquire further, and Jack went down again, whistling softly to himself.

Lydia found Donald in tribulation. He had remained up to write a letter to a friend at boarding-school, and somehow had managed to upset his inkstand. His attempts to prevent serious damage had only increased the mischief. A pale but very large ink-stain stared up at him from the wet carpet.

"De-struction!" exclaimed Lydia, as, standing at the open door, she took in the situation at a glance. "If you'd only rubbed it with blotting-paper the instant it happened," she continued, kneeling upon the floor, and rubbing vigorously with a piece that she had snatched from the table, "there wouldn't have been a trace of it by this time. Sakes!" glancing at the fine towel which Donald had recklessly used, "if you haven't ruined that too! Well," she sighed, slowly rising with a hopeless air, "nothing but sour milk can help the carpet now, and I haven't a drop in the house!"

"Never mind," said Donald; "what's a little ink-stain? You can't expect a bachelor's apartment to look like a parlor. I'll fling the rug over the place—so!"

"Not now, Master Donald. Do wait till it dries!" cried Lydia, checking him in the act, and laughing at his bewildered look. She ran down stairs with a half-reproachful "My, what a boy!"—while Donald, carefully putting a little water into the inkstand, to make up for recent waste, went on with his letter, which, it happened, was all about affairs not immediately connected with this story.

CHAPTER X.

Which presents a Faithful Report of the Interview between Mr. Reed and his Mysterious Visitor

"Hope the young folks are at home," remarked the "long, lank man," with an off-hand air of familiarity, comfortably settling himself in an arm-chair before the smouldering fire, and thrusting out his ungainly feet as far as possible. "Would be glad to make their acquaintance."

"My nephew and niece will not be down again this evening, sir," was the stiff reply.

"Ah? Hardly past nine, too. You hold to old-fashioned customs here, I perceive. 'Early to bed,' etcetera, etcetera. And yet they're no chickens. Let me see; I'm thirty-nine. According to my reckoning, they must carry about fourteen years apiece by this time. Dorothy looks it; but the boy seems younger, in spite of his big ways. Why not sit down, George?"

"Dorothy!—George!" echoed Mr. Reed's thought, indignantly. But with a stern resolve to be patient, he seated himself.

"Look here, George, as this is likely to be a long session, let's have a little more of a blaze here. I got chilled through, waiting for that door to open. Ah, that's something like!"

Meanwhile this cordial person, carefully selecting suitable pieces from the wood-basket on the hearth, and rearranging the fire, had seized the bellows and begun to blow vigorously, nearly shutting up his long figure, like a big clasp-knife, in the act.

"Excuse my making myself at home," he continued, jauntily poking a small log into place with the bellows, and then brushing his seedy trousers with his hand; "it was always my style. Most men that's been knocked about all their lives get shy and wary. But that's not Eben Slade. Well, when are you going to begin?"

"I am ready now, Mr. Slade."

"Pshaw! Don't Mr. Slade me. Call me Eben, plain Eben. Just as Kate did."

Mr. Reed's face flushed painfully.

"See here, George," the visitor went on, suddenly changing his sportive style to a manner that was designed to appear quite confidential and friendly,—"see here, I don't want to quarrel with you nor any other man. This here is just a chat between two almost relatives—sort of left-handed brothers, you know, and for my—"

"Slade!" exclaimed Mr. Reed, savagely, rising from his chair, but at once seating himself again, and speaking with forced calmness: "While I have allowed you this interview, I must request you to understand, now and for all time, as you have understood very plainly heretofore, that there can be no connection or implied relationship between us. For years we have been as strangers, and from this night must remain so!"

"Ex—actly!" assented Slade, cheerily—"the kind of strangers two chaps naturally would be, having the same sister—my sister by blood, yours by adoption."

Certainly this was a strong point with Mr. Slade, for he leaned forward and looked boldly into the other's face, as he finished the sentence.

"Yes," said Mr. Reed, with a solemn dignity, "precisely such strangers as the scape-grace brother of a noble girl must be to those who rescued this girl in her earliest childhood, sheltered her, taught her, honored and loved her as true brothers should, and to whom she clung with all a sister's fondness and loyalty."

"Pre—cisely!" observed Mr. Slade, with a mocking air of being deeply impressed. "Go on."

"You know the conditions under which you were adopted by Squire Hinsley, and Kate was adopted by my father, when you were left orphans, homeless, destitute—"

"Thank you. You are right. Quite destitute; I may say desperately destitute; though as I was six years of age at the time, and Kate but two, I have forgotten the painful particulars. Proceed."

"You know well," continued Mr. Reed, with quiet precision, "the agreement signed, sealed, and delivered, in the presence of witnesses, between my parents and John Hinsley on the one side, and your uncle and lawful guardian, Samuel Slade, on the other. The adoption was absolute. Kate was to have no legal claim on John Hinsley or his family; and you were to have none upon my father and his family. She was to be to my father, in all respects but birth, his own child,—his, Henry Reed's, to support and educate, sharing the fortune of his own children during his life, and receiving an equal share of his estate at his death; all of which was literally and faithfully fulfilled. And you were adopted by John Hinsley under similar conditions, excepting that they were, in fact, more favorable. He and his wife were childless, and rich in worldly goods; and they agreed to shelter and educate you—in fact, so long as you continued to obey and honor them, to treat you in all respects as their son and heir. You know the sequel. You had a pleasant home, tender care, and conscientious training; but, in spite of all, you were lazy, worthless, treacherous,—a source of constant grief and anxiety to the good pair who had hoped to find in you a son to comfort their old age—"

"Thank you, again!" exclaimed Eben Slade; "I always liked frankness."

"In time, and with good cause, they discarded you," continued Mr. Reed, without noticing the interruption, "and my father, for Kate's sake, did all in his power to win you to a decent life, but in vain. Later, in dire want and trouble, when even your worthless companions threw you off, you appealed to me, and I induced Mr. and Mrs. Hinsley to give you one more trial. But you fell into bad company again and ran away, deserting your adopted parents just when they were beginning to trust you. Your subsequent course I do not know, nor where you have been from that day to this. I only know that, although during your boyhood you were free to visit your sister, you never showed the slightest interest in her, nor seemed to care whether she were living or dead. Even when we brought you together, you were cold and selfish in your treatment of her, moved by a jealous bitterness which even her trustful love for you could not dispel. These are disagreeable truths, but I intend that we shall understand each other."

"So I see," muttered Eben.

"Meantime," continued Mr. Reed, in a different tone, and almost as if he were talking to himself and had forgotten the presence of his visitor, "Kate grew in sweetness, in truth and nobility of nature; grew into a strong, beautiful girlhood, honored by all, and idolized by her new parents and by her two brothers Wolcott and myself. Bearing our name from her infancy, and coming with us, soon after, into this new neighborhood as our only sister, her relationship never was questioned—"

Eben Slade had been listening in sullen patience, but now he asked, quickly:

"Do they, do the youngsters—"

"My brother's children?" asked Mr. Reed.

"Well, your brother's children, we'll say; do they know that she was adopted by their grandparents, that she was not their own flesh-and-blood aunt?"

"They think of her always as the beloved sister of their father and myself, as she virtually was," replied Mr. Reed. "From the first, the custom of our household was to consider her purely as one of the family; Kate herself would have resented any other view of the case. Therefore—"

"Therefore the children have been kept in the dark about it," exclaimed Eben Slade, exultingly, as though it were his turn now to utter plain truths.

"The question has never been raised by them. They were hardly more than six weeks old when they were brought to this house; and as they grew older, they learned to know of her and love her as their Aunt Kate. If ever they ask me the question direct, I shall answer it. Till then I shall consider Kate Reed—I should say Mrs. Kate Robertson—as my sister and their aunt."

"And I likewise shall continue to consider her as my sister, with your permission," remarked Eben, with a disagreeable laugh.

"Yes, and a true sister she would have been. The letters which she wrote you during your boyhood, and which you never answered, showed her interest in your welfare."

"If she had known enough to put money in them, now," sneered Eben Slade. "I was kept down in the closest way, and a little offering of that kind might— But that's neither here nor there, and I don't see the drift of all this talk. What I want to know—what in fact I came for, and what I intend to keep coming for, is to see her will."

"Her will?" asked Mr. Reed with surprise, and in an unconscious tone of relief, for he had feared a much more serious demand.

"Yes, now you've hit it! Her adopted parents were dead. She had inherited one-third of their estate. With such a fortune as that, she must have left a will. Where is it? I want to know what became of that money, and why you withheld—"

"Silence!" commanded Mr. Reed, sorely tempted to lay hands on the fellow, and thrust him from the house. "No insolence, sir!"

Just then Lydia opened the door, and as we already know, vanished as soon as she learned her presence had not been called for.

"What I want to know"—began Eben again, in a high key.

"Not so loud," said Mr. Reed, quietly.

His visitor's voice dropped, as, thrusting out his elbows and resting a hand on each arm of his chair, he started afresh:

"So Miss Kate Reed, as she called herself, and as you called her, never wrote me again after the old people died, eh?"

"Never" was uttered so significantly that his listener responded with a quick, "Well! what do you mean?"

"What do you mean?" echoed Slade with a darkening face. "Why didn't she ever write to me afterward?"

This was a bit of acting designed to mislead; for Kate had written again, and at that moment a yellow, worn letter, fourteen years old, was tucked snugly away in the visitor's pocket. And it was on the strength of this same letter that he hoped yet to obtain heavy favors from George Reed. Eben knew well enough what had become of the money, but, for some cunning reason of his own, chose for the present to plead ignorance.

"I will ask you a question in return," said Mr. Reed. "Why, if you took so keen an interest in your sister's fortune, did you not apply to me long ago for information?"

"Because," replied Eben Slade, boldly, "I had my reasons. I knew the money was safe; and I could bide my time."

"What!" exclaimed Mr. Reed, "do you pretend to be ignorant of the fact that, two years after my sister Kate's marriage, she started with her husband and baby to return to America, absolutely penniless?"

"Then, how could they pay for their passage?" asked Eben;—but meeting Mr. Reed's eyes, he went on in an injured tone, "I know nothing but what you choose to tell me. True, you forgot to advertise for me to put in an appearance and hear of something to my advantage, but I supposed, very naturally, that coming here I should learn that Kate had left me a share of her fortune as a matter of course, and then I'd be able to go back and settle myself respectably in the far West. I may as well tell you I have a wife somewhere out there, and if I had means to buy up a splendid mining property which can be had now for a mere song, I'd just buy it clean and settle down to a steady life."

During this speech, Eben Slade's expression of face had become so very frank and innocent that Mr. Reed's conviction began to waver. He had felt sure that Slade remembered well enough having long ago written him two letters—one asking for information concerning Kate's property, the other bemoaning the fact that it was all lost, and appealing to him for money. But now it seemed evident that these documents, still in Mr. Reed's good keeping, had quite escaped his visitor's memory.

"I don't want to go to law about this thing," continued Slade, slowly, as if to demand closer attention, "especially as it would stir up your home affairs for the public benefit; and so, as I say, I hope to settle things quietly. If I only had what ought to be coming to me, I wouldn't be here at all. It would be lonesome for my many friends in this favored spot, but I should be far away, making a man of myself, as they say in the books."

"What is all this to me?" said Mr. Reed, coldly. "You have had your answer concerning Mrs. Robertson's property. Have you any more questions to ask? It is getting late."

"Well, yes, a few. What about the wreck? No, let's hear from the date of the marriage." And Mr. Slade, inwardly surprised at Mr. Reed's patience, yet unable to forego the luxury of being as familiar and pert as possible, settled himself to listen to the story which Mr. Reed had permitted him to come and hear.

"They sailed," began that gentleman, "early in—"

Slade, leaning back in his easy-chair, waved his hand with a sprightly, "Beg pardon! Go back a little. This Robertson—"

"This Robertson," said Mr. Reed, as though it quite suited him to go back, "was a stranger to me, a friend of the lady whom my brother Wolcott afterward married. Indeed, Kate formed his acquaintance while visiting at this lady's home in New York. He was a fascinating, handsome man, of a visionary turn, and with extravagant tastes,—but without a grain of business capacity."

"Like myself," interrupted the listener, with an ugly attempt at a smile.

"From the first I opposed the marriage," continued Mr. Reed; "but the poor girl, reasonable in everything else, would listen neither to argument nor to appeal. She was sure that in time we would know him and believe in him as she did. I would not even attend the wedding, which took place at her friend's house; though, by the terms of my father's will, and very much against our judgment, my brother Wolcott and myself, who were her guardians up to the date of her marriage, gave up to her unconditionally one-third of the family estate on her wedding-day. The result was as we had feared. They sailed immediately for England, and there, he entered into various wild speculations, and in less than two years the little fortune was utterly gone."

"Can you prove it?" interrupted Mr. Slade, suspiciously.

"Meantime," said Mr. Reed, looking at him as though he were a vicious spaniel, "my brother had married, and had gone with his bride to Europe, intending to remain two years. In a twelvemonth his wife became the mother of twins, a boy and a girl, and before two weeks had passed their father was stricken with fever, and died. News then came to me, not only of my brother's death, but also that my sister Kate had become destitute, and had been too proud to let us know of her misfortunes, and finally, that at the time the letter was written, she and her husband, with their baby daughter, then only three weeks old, were living solely on the bounty of Wolcott's widow.

"There was but one thing to be done. The widow was broken-hearted, totally unable to attend to her business affairs, and Kate's husband, Mr. Robertson, was the last man whom I could trust to do it for her. But he at least could accompany the party to America, and I sent word for both families to come as soon as they could safely bring the three babies; and charged Mr. Robertson to leave nothing undone which could tend to their comfort and safety on the voyage.

"They sailed—" Here Mr. Reed paused, bracing himself for the remainder of the recital, which he had resolved should be complete and full. He had at hand legal papers proving that his adopted sister Kate, at the time of her marriage, had received her rightful third of his father's estate; but he did not feel in any way compelled to show these to his unpleasant visitor.

Eben Slade for an instant respected the silence. But he had a point to gain.

"Yes," said he, "but this is sudden news as to the loss of her property. I don't understand it. She must at some time have made a will. Show me documents!"

"There was no will," said Mr. Reed. "As for documents,"—here he arose, walked to a high, old-fashioned secretary, unlocked a drawer, and produced two letters,—"you may recognize these!" and he unfolded the yellow, time-worn sheets before Mr. Slade's astonished eyes—astonished, not that they were his own letters, betraying his full knowledge of his sister's loss of property, but that Mr. Reed should be able to produce them after all these fourteen years.

"See here!" said that gentleman, showing him one of the letters, and pointing to these heartless words in Slade's own handwriting: "It's terrible news; for now that Kate's money is gone, as well as herself, I know there's nothing more to look for in that quarter."

Slade scrutinized the passage with well-feigned curiosity. But he had his revenge ready.

"Seeing as you've a fancy for old letters, George, may be this 'ere will interest you."

Was it magic? Another yellow letter, very much soiled and worn, appeared to jump from Slade's pocket and open itself upon the table before Mr. Reed's eyes. He recognized Kate's clear, bright penmanship at a glance.

"Read it," said Eben, standing close, and still keeping hold of the letter.

And Mr. George read:

"In my extremity, Eben, I appeal to you. By this time you may be yourself again, turned from all evil ways. I married against my brother George's consent—and he has as good as cast me off. We are penniless; my husband seems completely broken down. He may not live long. My brother Wolcott has just died. I am too proud to go to his widow, or to my brother George. Oh, Eben, if I starve, if I die, will you take my baby-girl? Will you care for her for our dead mother's sake?"

"I'd have done my duty by that baby," said Eben Slade, slowly folding the letter, and looking with hateful triumph into Mr. Reed's pale face. "I'd have had my rights, too, and you never should have seen hide nor hair of the child if it had lived. I wish it had; she'd 'a' been handy about the house by this time, and my wife, whose temper is none of the best, would have had some one to scold besides me, as well as some one to do the chores. What have you got belonging to the child? What's hers is mine. Where's the baby-clothes,—the things that Robertson's people must have sent on afterward from England?"

"There was nothing sent on afterward," replied Mr. Reed, with a stunned look; but in an instant, he turned his eyes full upon Slade, causing the miserable creature to cringe before him:

"If you had the soul of a man, I could wish for your sake that something belonging to the lost baby had been saved; but there was nothing. My sister was not herself when she wrote that letter. She was frantic with grief and trouble, else she would have known that I would forgive and cherish her. And now, sir, if you are satisfied, I bid you good evening!"

"I am not satisfied," said Eben doggedly. "There's more to be settled yet. Where is the man who saw the shipwreck?"

Mr. Reed opened the window. Seizing something that hung there, he blew a shrill whistle, then lowered the sash and sat down.

Neither spoke a word. Quick steps sounded upon the stairs. The door opened.

"Ay, ay, Capt'n!" said Jack. Nero stood beside him, growling.

CHAPTER XI.

JACK.

Jack and Nero entered the library, where Mr. Reed and Eben Slade sat waiting.

The entrance of the sailor-coachman had a peculiar effect upon Eben Slade. It gave him a drowsy appearance. Some men have that look when they are specially on their guard.

"Did you want me, Capt'n?" asked Jack, after standing a few seconds and receiving no orders.

"No; I want you," spoke up Eben Slade, in a bold yet uneasy tone. "Let's see if you can answer a few plain questions."

Jack glanced inquiringly at Mr. Reed; then, brightening, replied to Slade as to one not at all worthy of his respect:

"Questions? P'raps. Reel 'em out."

It was plain from the start that, if the sailor-coachman could have his own way, Eben Slade would get but little information out of him. He had despised the fellow as a "skulker," from the moment he had seen him sneaking about the grounds like a spy, as he truly suspected him to be.

"So," began the questioner grandly, as if to awe his man into a becoming deference, "you are the person who, according to Mr. Reed, rescued the twins? How—I mean in what way, by what means—did you save them?"

"Mostly by tryin', your honor," replied Jack, sullenly.

Eben Slade looked vexed, but he returned blandly:

"Undoubtedly so. But I want the details of the saving. Let us hear from the beginning."

"There warn't any beginning," growled Jack. "The first we knew about it, it was all over."

"Well, but you had some part in the wreck, hadn't you? What was it?"

"I didn't have no part in it, bless you," replied Jack, with grim humor, "it did itself."

"Clever tar!" exclaimed Mr. Slade, in mock admiration, inwardly resolved to conciliate the man, if possible, by letting him have his own way for a while. "Well, I was on the wrong tack, as you sailors would say. Now, to start fair, can you tell me what happened after the first shock of the shipwreck was over? Which of the children did you pick up first?"

"Sorry I can't oblige you," said Jack; "but you see it was night, and, besides, I'd forgot my specs."

"Have you any recollection whatever on that point, Jack?" asked Mr. Reed, though he well knew what the answer must be.

"No, sir," replied Jack, respectfully; but instantly throwing a tone of pathetic appeal into his voice: "Why, Capt'n, look a' here! It's hard seein' any diff'rence between young babbies in broad sunlight and a smooth sea; but down in the ragin' waves, an' in the night time, now? It ain't in reason."

Mr. George nodded, and Slade, after thinking a moment, asked mildly:

"Did you happen to know any of the passengers, Jack?"

"When a cove hails from the fo'castle, your honor, he ain't apt to be over intimate in the cabins; but I knew one lady aboard, if I do say it."

"Ah," exclaimed Eben Slade, "now we have it! You knew one lady aboard. Which of the ladies was this?"

"It was the stewardess, sir, and she was drownded."

"And you knew no other lady, eh?"

"Can't say, sir. Opinions differ as to knowin'; what some might call bein' acquainted another might call otherwise," said Jack, with a scrape, and a light touch at his forelock.

"Right!" pursued Eben Slade. "Now did you happen to be 'acquainted, or otherwise,' with either Mrs. Reed or Mrs. Robertson?"

"I was 'otherwise,' your honor, with every lady on the ship, exceptin' the party I told you was drownded."

"Then you didn't know Mrs. Reed and Mrs. Robertson apart, am I to understand?" asked Slade, sharply.

"Can't say, sir. Never saw 'em apart."

"Ah! They were always together, then; now we're getting it. Could you tell which was the mother of the twins?"

"Could I tell which was the mother of the twins? I didn't know half the passengers from t'other half, let alone knowin' which babby belonged to which mother. Why, man, boxin' the compass back'ard would be nothin' compared to that. All I can tell you is we was 'most all hove out into the sea, high and low together."

"I'd have you hove out again if you were my man, or make you keep a civiller tongue in your head," was Eben's savage retort. "Now, sir, will you or will you not tell me how you saved the two babies, and what became of the other one?"

"I will not," answered Jack, doggedly; then seeing that Mr. George was about to reprove him, he added, in an altered tone: "As for the savin', that's my business; but the other poor little critter must'a been put into the boat with its poor mother. I feel sartain it was."

Eben leaned forward, and asked with some gentleness:

"How did you know it was the mother?"

"Because—well, by the way the poor soul screamed for it, when they were letting her and the rest down into the boat; and the way she quieted after,—that's how I know. But it's all unsartain."

"And where was the other mother?"

Jack turned an imploring glance toward Mr. Reed. Must he go on humoring the fellow?—but Mr. Reed's expressive nod compelled him to reply:

"The other mother? I don't know where she was. One instant we men was all obeyin' orders; the next, everything was wild. It was dark night, women screamin', men shoutin', the ship sinkin', some hollerin' she was afire, and every one savin' himself an' others as best he could. Perhaps you ain't aware that folks don't gen'rally go and get out the log at such times and set down their obserwations for future ref'rence."

"Did you see Mr. Robertson?" asked Slade, loftily. "Was he with the lady in the boat?"

"Well, if ever I met the like of land lubbers! Was he with the lady in the boat? Did I see him? Why, man, it warn't a pleasure-party. Out of all that shipload, barely twenty men and wimmen ever saw the sun rise again; and Mr. Robertson,—no, nor his wife, nor the babby, nor t'other poor lady,—warn't amongst them, as the master here can tell you; and none on 'em couldn't make us any the wiser about who the babbies belonged to. An' their mothers wasn't hardly ever on deck; 'most like they was sick in their state-rooms, for they was born ladies, both of 'em; and that's all you'll learn about it, if I stand here till daylight. Now, Capt'n, shall I pilot the gentl'man out?"

"Yes, you may," cried Eben, rising so suddenly that Jack's eyes blinked, though, apart from that, not a muscle stirred. "I'll have a talk with you outside."

"Jest my idee!" said Jack, with alacrity, holding wide the door. "No place like the open sea for a collision." Again his glance questioned Mr. Reed. He was in the habit of studying that face, very much as in times past he had studied the sky to learn the weather. But the stern answer he found there, this time, disappointed him, and "saved Eben Slade from bein' stove in an' set beam-end in less than no time," as Jack elegantly remarked to himself, while Mr. George rose and bade his visitor a stiff "good-evening."

CHAPTER XII.

A DAY IN NEW YORK.

On the next morning, when Donald and Dorothy, very much to their surprise, were advised by their uncle not to go to the Danbys' for the present, Dorry exclaimed, tragically:

"Not even to the Danbys', Uncle! Why, what have they done?"

His reply was far from satisfactory to the young lady.

"Done? Nothing at all, my girl. We'll not keep you in close confinement very long, so you must try to bear your captivity with fortitude. There are worse things, Dot, than being obliged to stay within one's own domain for a few days."

"I know it, Uncle!" said Dorry; then, resolving to be brave and cheerful, she added, with a mischievous laugh: "Wouldn't it be a good plan to tether us in the lot, with Don's pony?"

"Excellent!" replied Uncle. "But, by the way, we need not tether you quite yet. I have business in the city to-morrow, and if you and Donald say yes, it shall be a party of three."

"Oh, indeed we say yes," cried the now happy Dorry. "Shall you be there all day, Uncle?"

"All day, my dear. We shall have plenty of time for sight-seeing."

"Good! good!" and off she ran to tell the glad news to Lydia. "Only think, Liddy! Donald and I are to be all day in New York. Oh, we'll have such a nice time! and I'll buy you the prettiest white apron you ever wore in all your life!"

The new morning, skipping across the sparkling lake, climbed up to Dorry's window and wakened her with its sunny touch.

"Get up, Don," called Dorry, at the same time tapping briskly on her wall. "It's a glorious day!"

No answer. She tapped again.

A gruff, muffled sound was the only response. In a few moments, however, Dorry heard Don's window-blinds fly open with spirit, and she knew that her sisterly efforts to rouse him had not been in vain.

Uncle George was fond of giving pleasant surprises; so, when later they all three were comfortably settled in the rail-car, he remarked carelessly to Dorothy that he thought her idea an excellent one.

"What idea, please, Uncle?"

"Why, don't you remember expressing a wish that you and Don could make Dr. Lane a present before his departure?"

"Oh, yes, Uncle; but I didn't know that you heard me."

Well, the three talked the matter over quite confidentially under the friendly racket of the train, and finally it was decided to present to the good tutor a nice watch, with his name and "From his grateful pupils, Donald and Dorothy," engraved on the inside of the case. Donald had proposed a seal-ring, but Mr. Reed said heartily that while they were about it they might as well make it a watch; and Dorry, in her delight, came near jumping up and hugging her uncle before all the passengers. It is true, she afterwards expressed a wish that they could give Dr. Lane the price of the watch instead; but, finally, they agreed that a gift of money might hurt his feelings, and that after so many months of faithful service some sort of souvenir would be a more fitting token of respect and affection. Yes, all things considered, a watch would be best.

"He hasn't any at all, you know," said Dorry, earnestly, looking from one to the other, "and it must be an awful—I mean a great—inconvenience to him; especially now, when he'll have to be taking medicines every two hours or so, poor man."

Donald smiled; the remark was so like Dorry! But he looked into her grave yet bright young face, with his heart brimful of love for her.

The day in town passed off pleasantly indeed. As Uncle George's business took him to a banker's in Wall Street, the D's enjoyed a walk through that wonderful thoroughfare, where fortunes are said to come and go in an hour, and where every one, in every crowded room of every crowded building, and on almost every foot of the crowded sidewalk, thinks, speaks, and breathes, "Money, money, money!" from morning till night. But Uncle's business was soon despatched; the anxious crowds and the "clerks in cages," as Dorry called the busy workers in the banks, were left behind. Then there were fresh sights to be seen, purchases to be made, and above all, the watch to be selected,—to say nothing of a grand luncheon at Delmonico's, where, under their busy appetites, dainties with Italian and French names became purely American in an incredibly short space of time.

TRINITY CHURCH AND THE HEAD OF WALL STREET.

Uncle George delighted in the pleasure of the D's. The more questions they asked, the better he liked it, and the more sure he became that his Don and Dot were the brightest, most intelligent pair of young folk under the sun. In fact, he seemed to enjoy the holiday as heartily as they did, excepting when Dorothy, toward the latter part of the afternoon, surprised him with a blank refusal to go nearly three hundred feet above the street.

You shall hear all about it:

They were homeward bound,—that is to say, they were on their way to the down-town ferry-boat that would carry them to the railroad station,—when Donald suddenly proposed that they should stay over till a later train.

"And suppose we walk on down to Wall Street, Uncle," he continued, "and go into Trinity Church. There's a magnificent view from the spire."

"Yes," was his uncle's rather frightened comment. "But the spire is more than two hundred and eighty feet high. What are you going to do about that?"

"Why, climb up, sir, of course. You know there's a good stairway nearly to the top, perhaps all the way. Anyhow, we can get up there, I know; and Ed Tyler says the view is perfectly stupendous."

"So I've heard," said Uncle, half ready to yield; "and the climb is stupendous too."

"Yes, but you can look down and see the city, and the harbor, and all the shipping, and the East River, and everything. There's an hour to spare yet. We can take it easy. What say you, Uncle?"

"Well, I say yes," said Uncle, with forced heartiness, for he dearly loved to oblige the twins.

Then they turned to Dorry, though it seemed hardly necessary; she always was ready for an adventure. To their surprise, she responded emphatically:

"And I say, please let me wait somewhere till Uncle and you come down again. I don't care to go up."

"Why, Dot, are you tired?" asked her uncle, kindly.

"Oh, no, Uncle, not a bit. But whenever I stand on a high place I always feel just as if I must jump off. Of course, I wouldn't jump, you know, but I don't wish to have the feeling. It's so disagreeable."

"I should think as much," said Donald; but Mr. Reed walked on toward the ferry, silently, with compressed lips and a flushed countenance; he did not even mention the steeple project again.

Meantime the noble old church on Broadway stood calmly overlooking the bustle and hurry of Wall Street, where the "money, money, money" chorus goes on day after day, ceasing only on Sundays and holidays, and when the clustering stars shed their light upon the spire.

"Uncle thinks I'm a goose to have such silly notions," pondered Dorry, taking very long steps so as to keep up with her companions, who, by the way, were taking very short steps to keep pace with Dorry. "But I can't help my feelings. It really is true. I hate to stand on high places, like roofs and precipices." Finally, she spoke:

"Uncle George, didn't you ever hear of other persons having that feeling?"

"What feeling, Dorothy?"

How sternly Mr. Reed said it! Surely he could not blame the poor girl for asking so natural a question as that? No. But the incident had saddened him strangely, and he was unconscious of the severity of his tone, until Dorothy's hesitating manner changed the current of his thoughts.

"Why—why, the—" she began, adding: "Oh, it doesn't matter, Uncle. I suppose I am foolish to ask such questions. But Don is ever so much steadier-headed than I am—aren't you, Don? I do believe he'd like to stand on the top of that telegraph-pole, if he could get there."

"There's no 'if' about that," said Donald, jokingly. "It's a mere question of time. Provided a fellow can climb a pole at all, a little more height makes no difference. Why, if I hadn't on my crack suit, I'd ask you and Uncle to wait and let me have a try at it."

"Oho!" laughed Dorry: "'crack' suit is slang; so is 'have a try'. Five cents apiece. That's ten cents fine for you, sir! Well, we ought to be thankful he hasn't on his old clothes, Uncle! Ahem! The 'crack' would be in the head then, instead of the suit, I'm afraid."

"Poor joke!" retorted Don; "ten cents fine for you, young lady."

Thus the party walked on, the light-hearted D's bantering each other with many laughing sallies, feeling confident that their uncle enjoyed it exceedingly.

And so he did; yet all the while he was thinking:

"Strange! Every day something new—something that reminds me of poor Kate. Now it's this dread of standing on high places; what will it be to-morrow? And yet, as the child herself intimates, many other persons have the same feeling. Now I think upon it, it's the commonest thing in the world."

CHAPTER XIII.

DONALD AND DOROTHY ENTERTAIN FANDY.

In a few days after the visit to town, Mr. Reed received a letter, very dingy on the outside and very remarkable within. It was brought by one of the little Danby boys, and it read as follows:

"George Reed Esquir.

"Dear Sir: I take my pen to say that the border left yesterday without notis owin us fur the hole time. He hadent a portmanter nor any luggage except paper collars, which enabeled him to go off without suspition. A tellygram which he forgot and my wife afterward pikt it up said for him to go right to Pensivania old Squir Hinson was dying. It was from a party caling himself Janson K. The border as I aught to enform you has told my children inclooding Francis Ferdinand who bares this letter a cockanbull story about bein related to your honered self by witch we know he was an imposture. I write insted of calling at the house as I am laim from cuttin my foot with an ax yesterday and it dont apear quite cuncistunt to send you a verble message.

"Yours respecfully,
"Erasmus Danby.

"Saturday."

"Good!" exclaimed Mr. Reed, drawing a deep sigh of relief as he folded the missive. Then, conscience-smitten at his indifference to the Danby interests, and resolved that, in the end, Mr. Danby should be no loser by "the boarder," he looked toward Master Danby. That young gentleman, dressed in a made-over Sunday suit, still stood hat in hand in the library doorway.

"Is your father badly hurt, my little man?"

"No, sir," repeated Fandy, rapidly, and with a solemn countenance. "His thick boot saved him. The axe fell and cut through down to his skin, and it bled a sight, and 'Mandy 'most fainted, and Ma bandaged it up so tight he hollered a bad word."

"What?"

"Yes, sir. He said 'blazes!' And Ma said for him not to forget hisself if he was hurt, and he said he wouldn't again. And Ma devised him, as Sunday was comin' so soon, to take Saturday, and so give his foot two days to heal, and he's doin' it."

"But 'blazes' isn't a very, very bad word, is it?"

"No, sir, not very wicketly bad. But Pa and Ben mean it instead of swearin' words, and Ma's breaking them of it. Ma's very partic'lar."

"That's right," said Mr. Reed. "So, Master Francis Ferdinand," referring to the letter, "the boarder told you that he was a relation of mine, did he?"

"Yes, sir, but we knew better. He was a bad lot, sir."

"A very bad lot," returned Mr. Reed, much amused.

"Ma said I could stay, sir, if I was asked."

"Very well," said Mr. Reed, smiling down upon the little midget. "You probably will find Donald and Dorothy in the garret."

THE GARRET BEFORE FANDY'S ARRIVAL.

"Yes, sir!" and off went Fandy with nimble dignity through the hall; then soberly, but still lightly, up the stairs to the landing at the first turn; then rapidly and somewhat noisily across the great square hall on the second story, to the door of the enclosed stair-way, and, finally, with a shrill "whoop!" leaping up two steps at a time, he found himself in the open garret, in the presence of—the family cat!

No Donald or Dorothy was to be seen. Only the cat; and she glared at him with green eyes. Everything up there was as still as death; grim shadows lurked in the recesses and far corners; the window was shaded by some limp garments hanging near it, and now stirring drearily Fandy could chase angry cattle and frighten dogs away from his little sisters, but lonely garrets were quite another matter. Almost any dreadful object could stalk out from behind things in a lonely garret! The boy looked about him in an awe-struck way for an instant, then tore, at break-neck speed, down the stairs, into the broad hall, where Donald, armed like a knight, or so it seemed to the child, met him with a hearty, "Ho, is that you, Fandy Danby? Thought I heard somebody falling. Come right into my room. Dorry and I are practising."

"Praxin' what?" panted the relieved Fandy, hurrying in as he spoke, and looking about him with a delighted, "Oh my!"

Dorothy was a pretty girl at any time, but she certainly looked very pretty indeed as she turned toward the visitor—her bright hair tumbled, her face flushed with exercise, her eyes sparkling merrily. She held a fencing-mask in one hand, and a foil, lightly upraised, in the other.

"Oh, Fandy!" she said, "you are just the one we want. Don is teaching me to fence, and I can't half see how he does it, because I have to wear the mask. Here, let me put it on you—that's a good boy," and she suited the action to the word, laughing at the astonished little face which Fandy displayed through the wire network.

"Now, take the foil!—No, no. In your right hand, so." Then, addressing Donald, she added: "Now he's ready! Fall to, young man!"

"Yes! fall to-o!" shouted Fandy, striking an attitude and catching the spirit of the moment, like the quick little fellow he was. "Fall to-o!"

Donald laughingly parried the small child's valiant but unscientific thrusts, while Dorry looked on in great satisfaction, sure that she now could "catch the idea" perfectly.

No armed chieftain at the head of his clan ever appeared more desperately valiant than Fandy on this occasion.

Fortunately cats can tell no tales.

A very active youngster of eight, with a long foil in his strong little hand, striking right and left regardless of consequences, and leaping from the ground when making a thrust at his opponent's heart, or savagely attempting to rival the hero of Chevy Chase who struck off his enemy's legs, is no mean foe. Donald was a capital fencer; and, well skilled in the tricks of the art, he had a parry for every known thrust. But Fandy's thrusts were unknown. Nothing more original or unexpected could be conceived; and every time Dorry cried "foul!" he redoubled his strokes, taking the word as a sort of applause. For a while, Donald laughed so much that he scarcely could defend himself; but, whenever he found that he was growing short of breath, he would be in earnest just long enough to astonish his belligerent foe. At the moment when that lively young duellist flattered himself that he was doing wonders, and pressing the enemy hard, Donald would stop laughing for a second, make a single sudden pass toward Fandy, with a quick turn of his wrist, and, presto! the eight-year-old's foil, much to his amazement, would leave his hand as if by magic, and go spinning across the floor. But Fandy, utterly unconscious that this unaccountable accident was a stroke of art on Donald's part, was not in the least disconcerted by it.

Fandy's first fencing-match.

"Hello!" he would shout, nothing daunted, "I've dropped my soword! Wait a minute. Don't hit me yet!" And then, picking up his weapon, he would renew the attack with all his little might.

At last, Donald, wearying of the sport, relieved himself of his mask and consulted his watch, a massive but trusty silver affair, which had been worn by his father when a boy.

Was Fandy tired? Not a bit. Practice had fired his soul. "Come on, Dorothy!" he cried. "Pull to-o! I mean, fall to-o!"

But Dorry thanked him and declined; whereat a thought struck the young champion. His expression grew fierce and resolute as, seizing the foil with a sterner grip, he turned to Donald.

"There's a cat up stairs. I guess it's a wild-cat. D' YOU WANT IT KILLED?"

"Oh, you little monster!" cried Dorry, rushing to the door and standing with her back against it. "Would you do such a thing as that?"

"I would to d'fend myself," said Fandy, stoutly. "Don't hunters kill tigers?"

"But this isn't a tiger, nor even a wild-cat. It's tame. It's our Nan!"

"Let him go try," spoke up Donald. "He'll get the worst of it."

"Indeed I'll not let him try, either," cried Dorry, still holding her position.

But Fandy already was beginning to cool down. Second thoughts came to his rescue.

"I don't believe in hurtin' tame animals," said he. "It's naughty," and the foil and mask were laid carefully upon the table.

"Who taught you to fight with these things?" he asked Donald in an off-hand way, as though he and Don were about equal in skill, with the great difference that his own power came to him by nature, while Donald's undoubtedly was the result of severe teaching.

"Professor Valerio."

"Oh, did he? I've heard 'Manda talk about him. She says he's the—the—somethingest man in the village. I forget now what she called him. What's those things?" Here the visitor pointed to Don's boxing-gloves.

At any other time Don would have taken them from the wall and explained their use, but it was nearly three o'clock, and this was his fencing-lesson day. So he merely said, "They're boxing-gloves."

"Do you wear 'em?" asked Fandy, looking in a puzzled way, first at the huge things, then at Donald's hands, as if comparing the sizes.

"Yes, when I'm boxing," returned Donald.

"What will you do about your fencing-lesson, Don?" said Dorry. "Do you think Uncle will let you go? We're prisoners, you know."

"Of course he will," replied Donald, taking his hat (he had a mask and foil at the professor's) and preparing to start. "I'm to call for Ed Tyler at three. We'll have rare times to-day; two fellows from town are to be there,—prime fencers, both of them,—and we are to have a fencing match."

THE FENCING-MASTER.

"You'll win," said Dorry. "You always do. Ed Tyler says you are the finest fencer he ever saw, excepting Professor Valerio, and he says you beat even the professor sometimes."

"Nonsense!" said Donald, severely, though his face betrayed his pleasure. "Ed Tyler himself's a match for any one."

"What a mutual-admiration society you two are!"

Dorry said this so good-naturedly that Donald could not resent it, and his good-nature made her add:

"Well, I don't care. You're both splendid, if I do say it; and, oh, isn't the professor handsome! He's so straight and tall. Uncle says he's a standing argument against round shoulders."

Dorry had taken a photograph from the table, and had been talking partly to it and partly to Donald. As she laid the picture down again, Fandy stepped up to take a look.

"Who is it?" he asked.

"It's Professor Valerio, Don's fencing-master."

"Whew! See his soword!" exclaimed the small boy, looking at the picture in great admiration. "My, wouldn't I like to fight him!"

"There goes Don," said Dorothy, who by this time was looking out of the window; "Uncle must have consented."

"Consented!" echoed Fandy. "Why, can't Donald go out 'thout askin'? Ben can, and Dan David, too; so can 'Mandy and——Hello, Charity, I'm a-comin'."

This last remark was shouted through the open window, where Dorothy stood waving her hand at the baby.

"Can you come up, Charity?" she cried out.

"No, thank you. Mother said I must hurry back. She wants Fandy."

CHAPTER XIV.

UNCLE GEORGE'S HAPPY THOUGHT.

Dr. Lane, made proud and happy by the affection of his bright young pupils, as well as by their beautiful gift, bade farewell to Mr. Reed and the D's, with repeated promises to write in due time and tell them how he liked the sunny South, and how it fared with him.

"I shall like it, I know," he assured them, "and the climate will make me strong and well. Good-by once more, for you see" (here he made a playful show of consulting his watch as he took it proudly from his vest-pocket) "it is precisely six and three-quarter minutes after three, and I must catch the 4.20 train to town. Good-by." But there were more good-byes to come; for Jack had brought the light top-wagon to the door, and Donald and Dorothy insisted upon driving with him and Dr. Lane to the station.

Upon their return, they found their uncle and Liddy engaged in consultation.

The evening came on with change of wind, a dull gray sky and all the unwelcome signs of a long storm.

"I have been thinking," remarked Mr. Reed, while he and the D's were waiting for supper, "that it would be a good idea to have a little fun between times. What say you, my dears?"

The dears looked at each other, and Don asked, "Between what times, Uncle?"

"Why, between the going of our good friend Dr. Lane and the coming of that awful, but as yet unknown personage, the new tutor."

"Oh, yes, Uncle!" cried Dorothy, clapping her hands, "I'm ready for anything. But then," she added, half-playfully, "you forget we're prisoners, like the princes in the Tower!"

"Not prisoners at all now," he exclaimed, "unless the storm should prove your jailer. Circumstances have changed; and you are free as air."

"Let me see, what shall we have," he went on, taking no notice of the D's' surprise at this happy turn of affairs, and speaking slowly and deliberately—just as if he had not settled that matter with Liddy some days ago!—"Let me see. What shall it be? Ah, I have a happy thought! We'll try a house-picnic!"

"What's that, Uncle?" asked Dorry, half-suspiciously.

"You don't know what a house-picnic is!" exclaimed Uncle George with pretended astonishment. "Well, upon my word!"

It did not occur to him to mention that the idea of a house-picnic was purely an invention of his own; nor did he suspect that it was one which could have found favor only in the brain of a doting and rich bachelor uncle.

"Now, Uncle, do—don't!" coaxed Dorry; and Don echoed, laughingly: "Yes, Uncle, do—don't!" But he was as eager as she to hear more.

"Why, my dears, a house-picnic means this: It means the whole house thrown open from ten in the morning till ten at night. It means fun in the garret, music and games in the parlor, story-telling in odd corners, candy-pulling in the kitchen, sliding-curtains, tinkling bells, and funny performances in the library; it means almost any right thing within bounds that you and about thirty other youngsters choose to make it, with the house thrown open to you for the day."

"No out-of-doors at all?" asked Donald, doubtfully, but with sparkling eyes.

"Oh, yes, a run or two when you wish, for fresh air's sake; but from present appearances, there'll be drizzling days all the week, I suspect, and that will make your house-picnic only the pleasanter."

"So it will! How splendid!" cried Dorry. "Jack can take the big covered wagon and go for the company, rain or not, while Don and you and I plan the fun. We'll try all sorts of queer out-of-the-way things. Good for the house-picnic!"

"Good for the house-picnic!" shouted Donald, becoming almost as enthusiastic as Dorry.

"Oh, Uncle," she went on, "you are too lovely! How did you happen to think of it?"

"Well, you see," said Uncle, with the glow-look, as Liddy called it, coming to his face, "I thought my poor princes in the Tower had been rather good and patient under the persecutions of their cruel Uncle Gloucester, and so Liddy and I decided they should have a little frolic by way of a change."

"Has he gone from the neighborhood, I wonder?" thought Donald (strange to say, neither he nor Dorry had known that the Danbys' boarder and the "long, lank man" were the same), but he said aloud: "We're ever so glad to hear it, Uncle. Now, whom shall we invite?"

"Oh, do hear that 'whom'!" exclaimed Dorry, in well-feigned disgust, while Don went on gayly:

"Let's have plenty of girls this time. Don't you say so, Dorry?"

"Oh, yes, let's have fifteen girls and fifteen boys. Let's invite all the Danbys; may we, Uncle? It would be such a treat to them; you know they never have an opportunity to go to a party."

"Just as you please, my girl; but will not ten of them be rather a large proportion out of thirty?"

"Oh, no, Uncle dear. They can't all come—not the very littlest ones, any way. At any rate, if Don's willing, I'd like to ask them."

"Agreed!" assented Don.

"The ayes have it!" said Uncle George. "Now let us go to supper."

Dorry ran on ahead, so as to have a word with Liddy on the delightful subject of house-picnics; but Don, lingering, startled his uncle with a whispered:

"I say, Uncle, has Jack thrashed that fellow?"

"I have heard nothing to that effect," was the reply. "The man was called away suddenly."

"Oh," said Donald, in a disappointed tone, "I hoped you had given him his walking papers."

"I have, perhaps," returned Mr. Reed, smiling gravely, "but not in the way you supposed."

Don looked up, eagerly, hoping to hear more, but his uncle, without another word, led the way into the supper-room.

CHAPTER XV.

THE HOUSE-PICNIC.

The house-picnic proved a complete success. In the first place, not only the original thirty came, but other boys and girls whose names had been added to the list; secondly, a lovely snow-storm, one of the bright, dry kind, had come during the night, and evidently had come to stay; thirdly, the guests made it a frolic from the start, and every sleigh-load driven to the door by Jack came in singing and cheering; fourthly, Uncle George, as Dorry said, was "splendid," Jack was "good as gold," and Liddy was "too lovely for anything;" fifthly, the house from top to bottom was bright, home-like, and beautiful; and lastly, hardly anything was broken, not a single child was killed, and the house wasn't burned to the ground,—all of which Liddy and Jack agreed was "simply mirac'l'us!"

Such a wonderful day as that is hard to describe. Imagine the scene. Great square halls on the first and second floors; broad stair-ways; fine open rooms; pleasant fires; beautiful flowers; boys and girls flitting, gathering everywhere, from garret to kitchen,—now scattered, now crowded, now listening to stories, now running, now hiding, now gazing at an impromptu "performance," now sitting in a demure circle, with a napkin on every lap,—you know why,—now playing games, now having a race on the broad freshly-swept piazza, that extended along every side of the mansion, now giving three cheers for Uncle George, and then beginning all over again. It lasted more than ten hours, yet nobody was tired, (until the next day!) and all the guests declared, in one way or another, that it was the very nicest time they ever had known in their lives. Donald and Dorothy were delightful as host and hostess. They enjoyed everything, were on the alert for every one's pleasure, and by their good-humor, courtesy, and graceful manners, unconsciously set an example to all the picnickers. Uncle George,—ah, now I know what to say! You have known him heretofore as a man of grave responsibility,—troubled with an anxiety which to you, perhaps, has been uncomfortably mysterious. But Uncle George, at the house-picnic, was quite a different man. He threw care to the winds, proposed games, invented capital "forfeits," sprang surprises upon the guests, laughed and played like a splendid boy, and, better yet, wore his "glow-look" nearly all the time.

"How handsome Mr. Reed is!" thought more than one young guest. "They say his brother Wolcott was handsomer still. No wonder Don and Dorry are so good-looking. Ho! what are we going to do now?"

Then would follow a merry, well-ordered rush to this or that part of the house, according to the special attraction of the moment. But, really, it is quite impossible for any one to describe the day properly. The only way is to give you a few notes from observations taken on the spot.

We'll begin with the kitchen—Norah's kingdom. There she stands, a queen in a calico gown. But Dorothy has the sceptre. It is a big wooden spoon. She and a dozen other girls are crowding about the big cooking-stove. All have large towels pinned over their dresses, after the fashion of Topsy's apron—close to the throat, tight around the skirt, and the arms left free. What in the world are they making? What but molasses candy! It is nearly done. It ought to be, after the boiling and the stirring that the girls in turn have given it. Finally, some one holds forward a pan of cold water. Dorothy, carefully dipping out a spoonful of the fragrant syrup, drops it into the water. It sizzes; it stiffens—hurrah! the candy is ready to be taken from the fire.

Cool enough now. "Come, boys! Come, girls!" cries Uncle.

"Here, put these on,—every one of you!" cries Liddy, her arms loaded with the coarse towel-aprons which she—knowing soul!—had specially prepared for the occasion. "Sakes! be careful! Don't burn yourselves!"

But who hears? They are pulling the candy already. Boys and girls in pairs, with hands daintily washed and greased, are taking soft lumps of the cooling confection, drawing them out into long, shining ribbons, doubling and drawing them out again until they get lighter and lighter in color, and finally, the beautiful golden strands are declared ready for more artistic handling. Then follow royal fun and rivalry, each young confectioner trying to outdo the other. Some twist the soft candy into sticks and lay them aside to cool; some braid it charmingly; others make little walking-canes; others cut it into caramels,—one and all indulging meantime in flavorsome morsels, and finally shouting with delight over Donald's masterpiece, which he has placed upon the table for inspection, and which he calls

THE MAID OF ORLEANS!

"Ha! ha!" shouts Daniel Danby. "Pretty good! But supposing it hadn't been made of Orleans! Guess there are other kinds of molasses." But that sarcastic and well-informed young gentleman is hardly heard in the laughing commotion.

Ah, what a washing of hands! For the fun of the thing, Uncle George has caused warm water to be put into a great tub, which stands upon the wash-bench, and now the candy-pullers take their turn in a close ring about it, all frantically feeling and struggling for the soap which repeatedly bobs to the surface, only to be dashed out of sight again by some desperate little hand.

While this merry crowd of cooks and pullers is working and frolicking in the kitchen, under Norah's watchful eye, a few of the company may be found in other parts of the old mansion, amusing themselves in their own fashion. Some of the very young guests are in the upper rooms playing childish games; and one or two older ones, who, as it happens, see quite enough of the kitchen in their own homes, prefer to enjoy themselves now in the finer apartments.

THE CANDY-PULLING.

We'll look into Mr. Reed's study, the door of which stands slightly ajar. Amanda Danby is there alone. She is sitting in the master's big chair with a volume of poems in her hand—forgetting the party, forgetting that she has laboriously smoothed her curly hair for the occasion, forgetting that she is wearing her precious drab merino—her mother's wedding gown—now made over for the fourth time, forgetting the new collar and pretty blue bow at her throat (Dorry's gifts), conscious only that

"The bride kissed the goblet; the knight took it up,
He quaffed off the wine, and he threw down the cup.
She looked down to blush, and she looked up to sigh,
With a smile on her lips, and a tear in her eye.
He took her soft hand, ere her mother could bar,—
'Now tread we a measure!' said young Lochinvar."

Amanda smiles to herself as she turns the leaf, feeling that, after all, there is a great deal of life and spirit in the world, and that dish-pans, pots, and kettles are mere phantoms of the imagination. The verse runs on so smoothly too. She could write whole books of poetry herself if she only had gone somewhere and improved herself. Then, as she reads on, the great, comfortable arm-chair, the soft carpet, the well-filled book-shelves and the subdued light, give her a vague, delightful sense of having improved herself already.

Let us look into the other rooms. No one in the parlor; the back sitting-room, too, is deserted; the dining-room is locked for awhile; but high up on the garret-stairs sit three wide-eyed, open-mouthed youngsters listening to Ben Buster.

"True?" he is saying, "of course it's true; I knew the boy myself—Joe Gunther, smart fellow. He's on a ranch, now, out in Californy. I'll tell you how it was; he was living with a settler named Brown, 'way off in Utah. Brown had three men besides Joe to help him,—sort of partnership, I b'lieve, raising cattle. It was a desolate place, and the Indians were troublesome. Brown nor his men never went outside the door without a loaded gun, and they kept several more in the hut, always loaded, ready for an attack. One morning, long before daylight, Joe heard a rumpus. He was in bed,—none of your cots, but a bunk, like a shelf, fastened to the inside of the stockade walls."

"What do you mean by stockade walls?" asks one of the listeners.

"Why, walls made out of logs standing upright. It was only a hut, you see; no laths, nor plaster, nor any such nonsense. Well, Joe knew by what he heard that old man Brown was inside, firing from the door at the Indians; didn't know where the other two were,—killed, may be,—and so Joe gets up on his knees and looks through a crevice of the stockade wall, and sees the chief crawling stealthily around the hut to get in at the only window and attack the old man! A loaded gun—double barrel—was hanging on the wall right near Joe. What did he do but take it, put the muzzle through the chink, and let go at the fellow; discharged both barrels clean at him. 'You will, will you?' he yelled out, as the Indian fell; and I declare, if the other Indians weren't so scared and mystified by the sudden voice, and the chief killed, out of the very walls, as it seemed to them, that they turned and scampered. Joe rushed out to old man Brown, and there he was, with his two partners, at the door, not one of the three scratched, and the chief was lying there by the stockade wall, just as he fell.

"Joe didn't care to go near him, for by this time he began to feel rather weak in the joints. But the most wonderful part of all is to come yet. That Indian chief was only wounded, after all. They thought he was killed; and while the three men and Joe were in the hut, planning what they should do next,—for they were sure the redskins would come back in greater force to get the body of their chief,—I declare if that old Indian didn't up and go about his business. Brown and Joe and all of them searched the forest well, that day and the next, but they never found him. Joe had made his mark though, and he was in more than one scrimmage with the Indians after that."

"It's a shame to kill Indians!" at last exclaims one of Ben's awe-stricken listeners. "My father says they've been imposed upon and abused by the white folks. He says we ought to teach them instead of killing them."

"That's so," says another of the trio, nodding emphatically. "My father says so too."

"Oh, does he?" returns Ben Buster, in mild wrath, "who doesn't? But this was a fair fight. What are you going to do when they're doin' the killing, eh? Open your book and hear them a spelling lesson? Guess not. Ask 'em questions in 'rithmetic when they're helping themselves to your scalp? Oh, of course."

All of which would be very impressive and very convincing to the young hearers, did not a small boy, named Jedediah Treadwell, at this moment come suddenly rushing across the hall, shouting—

"Ho! Candy! I smell merlasses candy. They're making it. Come on."

And down they run—all but Ben, who prefers to go through the house in search of adventures. He opens a door, sees a small ring of prettily dressed little girls and boys, hand in hand, singing:

"Oats, pease, beans, and barley grows!
You nor I nor nobody knows
Where, oats, pease, beans, and barley grows."

He beats a hasty retreat. Signs of commotion come from Mr. Reed's room on the other side of the hall; but Ben, hearing Fandy's familiar voice there, turns aside and goes slowly down stairs, feeling rather bored since there is no one to listen to his stories.

Soon he is in the kitchen, laughing with the rest at Donald's expressive masterpiece, but secretly resolving never to go into company again until he can have a frock-coat. The blue cloth jacket and trousers, bought with his last year's savings, somehow do not seem to him as fine as they did when he put them on earlier in the day; though he is an independent youth, not easily made dissatisfied with his appearance. For the first time in his life he rather envies Daniel David and Ellen Elizabeth, who look remarkably well on this occasion, being dressed in clothes that once were Donald's and Dorothy's. This is no unusual effect. For Lydia, with Mr. Reed's hearty sanction, has long been in the habit of slyly handing garments to Mrs. Danby, with the flattering assurance that as the dear D's grow like weeds, it will be an act of real kindness if Mrs. Danby will turn the clothes to good account; and Mrs. Danby always has complied.

Talking of the Danbys, perhaps this is a fitting time to explain the commotion that Ben heard in Mr. Reed's sleeping-room.

A moment before, and in the midst of certain lively planning, a middle-sized boy, named Thomas Budd, had strayed from the candy-pulling scene and appeared at the threshold of this apartment, where Charity Danby, little Isabella Danby, Fandy, and three or four others were assembled.

"All right!" shouted Fandy, excitedly, as Master Budd entered; "come along, Tommy Budd, you can play too. Now Charity Cora, look out for Is'bella! We're going to have my new game."

"Oh, please do, Cora! quick!" cried little Helen Danby. "Fandy's made it up all hisself, and he's goin' to teach it to us."

"That's right," said Fandy, approvingly, as Charity Cora hastily lifted her three-year-old sister from the floor; "take her 'way off. It's a awful dang'rous game. She might get killed!"

Very naturally, Cora, with little Isabel in her arms, stood near the door to see what was going to happen.

"Now, chil'ren," cried Fandy, "take your places all over. Pete, you're a lion; Sammy, you're a big wolf; Helen, you're a wild cat; Gory, you're a elephant; and Tommy, you'll have to be,—let's see, what other animal is there? Oh! yes; you must be a kangaroo! and I'm a great big hunter-man, with a gun an' a soword!"

So saying, the great big hunter-man took a small brass-handled shovel and poker from the brass stand by the open fireplace, and struck an attitude.

"Now, chil'ren, you must all go 'round, a-howling and going on like what you all are, and I'll pounce on you fass as I can, an' kill you. When I shoot, you must fall right down; and when I chop off your heads with my big soword, you must roar awful."

"Hah! Where's the game in that?" cried Gory, scornfully.

"Why—let's see," said Fandy, rather puzzled. "Oh! yes; the one I kill first is it—that's the game."

"All right," exclaimed Tommy Budd, "and then that one takes the gun and sword and hunts. That's first-rate. Let's begin."

But Fandy objected to this.

"No, no," he said, "I've got to do all the killin', 'coz it's my game. I'll tell you what! The ones that gets killed are dead animals; and all the dead animals can go under the bed!"

"That'll do," they shouted; and the game began. Such roaring and baying, growling and shouting, were never heard in human habitation before.

Baby Isabel, who must have been born to be a lion-tamer, looked on in great glee; and Cora tried not to feel frightened.

Fandy made a capital hunter; he shot right and left, and sawed off the heads of the slain like a good fellow, until at last there were four dead animals under the bed, all lying curled up just as still as mice.

There was only one more animal to kill, and that was Tom, the kangaroo.

Bang! went Fandy's gun—the shovel end pressed in style against his shoulder. Bang!

But the kangaroo didn't fall.

Fandy took more careful aim, and fired again.

Bang!

Still the kangaroo hopped about, as frisky as ever.

"Bang! I tell you! Don't you hear me say 'bang'? Why don't you go dead?"

"You haven't hit me yet," retorted the kangaroo, taking wonderful leaps. "Look out! Pretty soon I'll jump on you and smash you!"

"No, you won't, neither!" cries the hunter, growing very red and taking fresh aim.

Bang!

Unlucky shot! The kangaroo was on him in an instant.

"Now, sir," growls the kangaroo, butting the overthrown hunter with his head, "what's the next part of this game? Who beats?"

"I do!" gasped Fandy. "Get off me."

This was too much for the dead animals under the bed. They began to laugh.

Cora laughed as heartily as any, and so did half a dozen big boys and girls who by this time had assembled in the open doorway.

"Stop laughin'," shouted Fandy, still struggling under the kangaroo, "an' all you under the bed come out. Don't you know when all the animals 'cept one is killed, that's the end of the game? Let's play somethin' else."

"Where'd you get that?" he added, as soon as he was a free man,—partly to change the subject, and partly because a boy whom he knew suddenly appeared eating a piece of molasses candy.

"Down stairs. We've been making loads of it," was the muffled reply.

A hint was enough. It is hardly necessary to say that in a twinkling, lion, tiger, wild cat, wolf, elephant, and hunter and kangaroo had joined the crowd in the kitchen, and were feasting ecstatically upon caramels and molasses sticks.

"Whatever shall I do, Mr. George, sir," said the distressed Lydia, "to stop the eating? They'll be sick, sir, every mother's child of them, if they keep on."

"Tell them to wash their hands and faces and come to the parlor. We'll have the picture-gallery game now," said Mr. Reed.

Accordingly, scouts were sent through the house to bring the company together. Meantime, Sailor Jack, in his best clothes, was hard at work clearing the decks for action, as he said.

All were in the parlor and seated, at last. That is, all excepting Uncle George and eight or ten, who hardly could be missed from such a roomful. Jack had arranged the chairs in several long rows, facing the great sliding-doors that separated the parlor from the back sitting-room; and on these were seated subdued and expectant boys and girls, all gazing at the closed doors, while the youngest of the guests sat on the floor in front of the chairs, half-frightened, half-delighted at the prospect of "seeing something."

By this time the feathery snow-storm had ceased, and a flood of afternoon sunlight was pouring into the large room. Whispered comments upon the change of weather arose, coupled with remarks that there would be coasting next day, anyhow; then came other remarks, and light laughter, with occasional clapping of hands, when suddenly Mr. Reed appeared at the side entrance which led into the hall:

"YOUNG LADIES AND GENTLEMEN! You are now to see a live picture-gallery, and we ask for your criticism upon the paintings, begging you to be merciful in your remarks, and not to be too funny while you try to make the pictures laugh. For, you must know, if any picture in our gallery is guilty of even a smile, it must instantly pop out of sight, leaving its frame empty. When all the frames are thus deserted, we shall expect some of you to fill them again. In fact, each picture in the present exhibition is to select his or her substitute for the next time."

At this, some of the boys looked troubled, and some of the girls tittered; but one and all clapped, in hearty applause of Mr. Reed's little speech.

Then came the tinkle of a bell to announce that all was ready; Ed Tyler and Donald pushed back the sliding doors, and there, in the great square doorway, was the picture-gallery. To be strictly correct, we should call this gallery a gray wall, apparently hung from top to bottom with fine portraits in broad gilt frames, and all looking wonderfully life-like and unnatural; for when a live portrait must not laugh, how can it feel at ease?

At first the spectators were too surprised to speak. Then came a murmur of admiration, with cries of "Good, good!" from the boys and "How lovely!" from the girls; while Liddy, by the parlor door, clasped her hands in silent rapture at the beautiful show.

Beautiful, indeed, it was. All the portraits were as fresh and glowing as though they had been "painted yesterday." The drawing was perfect, the coloring exquisite, and so well were the pictures lighted, so cunningly provided with dark backgrounds, that they seemed really to be paintings. Dorry, in a prim Quaker cap and muslin neckerchief, was prettier than ever. Josie Manning, in red cloak and hood, made a charming gypsy; little Fandy, with his brown eyes and rosy cheeks, was a remarkably handsome portrait of himself; and a sallow, black-haired youth in a cloak and slouched hat, with a paper-cutter in his clenched fist, scowled admirably as a brigand. The other pictures, though content to be simply faces trying not to smile, were really very bright and effective, and a credit to any artist.

"Well!" exclaimed Uncle, after a moment, "what have the critics to say? What do you think of—of the gypsy, for instance? Who will buy it?"

"I won't!" shouted a funny little fellow in knickerbockers. "It's a chromo."

The gypsy twitched very slightly, and all the other pictures put on increased solemnity of expression, for they felt that their time, too, was coming.

"Do you throw in the frame?" asked some one else.

"Isn't that right eye a little out?" said a girl who was taking drawing-lessons.

This made the picture laugh, and presto! the frame was empty.

After this, though the remarks made were not brilliant nor irresistibly funny, the picture-gallery soon suffered severe losses. So small a thing will make us laugh when we try to look grave. The brigand exploded at a cutting allusion to his dagger; the Quakeress yielded to a profound remark concerning her chiaro-scuro; other faces grinned the instant they were specially alluded to, and finally, Fandy's portrait was the only one left in its frame. That bright little countenance stared into the room so defiantly that even Uncle George tried, with the rest, to conquer it.

In vain critics criticised—the portrait was deaf. In vain they tried to be as funny as they could; it was obdurate. In vain they shouted at it, laughed at it. Not a smile. Fandy was a youth of principle, and he felt bound in honor to do his duty. Then the boys called the picture names. It was a monkey, a tramp, a kitten, an eel, a hop-toad. Everybody tried to think of something too funny for him to resist. Then Donald said:

"No, it's not an animal at all. Let's see—what does it look like, any way? Ah, it's a target; don't you see the bull's-eye?"

Not a smile.

"Bring a pot of varnish," cried Ed Tyler, "the picture is so dull we'll shine it up a little and see what that will do." Suddenly a childish howl was heard, to everybody's surprise; for little three-year-old Isabel had been quite forgotten.

"A-ow, a-ow! Tate Fan'-y down. What's 'e masser wis Fan'-y? Me want Fan'-y."

The little sister unconsciously triumphed where every one else had tried and failed. Fandy laughed with the rest, and instantly disappeared, as though he had been blown out like a candle. He was soon in the parlor, comforting Isabel to the best of his ability, casting saucy glances at the rest of the company meanwhile, with a merry shake of the head, as if to say, "You thought you could make me laugh, did you? No, sir, you couldn't."

Now while the folding doors were closed, a new set of pictures was made; the bell tinkled again, and the game went on as before.

There hung the same six frames in the same places upon the gray wall; but the portraits were new, and very effective, though some of them laughed as soon as the opened doors revealed them to the spectators. This time, by way of variety, each frame as soon as vacated was filled with another portrait in full view of the company. When the emptied frame happened to be on the lower part of the gray wall, the new "picture" had only to stand or kneel upon the carpet behind the frame, but if it happened to be higher up, he or she was obliged to climb upon a chair or table behind it, or even a ladder, whichever might be necessary to enable the picture to appear at the proper place.

For this gray wall, you must know, was but a large straight curtain of dark cotton stuff, without any fulness, stretched tightly across the doorway behind the sliding doors, and with large square or oblong pieces cut out of it here and there. Each open space thus left was bordered with a strip of gilt paper, thus forming an empty picture-frame. Don and Dorry had made the whole thing themselves the day before, and they were therefore very happy at the success of the picture-gallery, and the fun it created. They had ingeniously provided the highest pictures with small, dark curtains, fastened above the back of the frames, and hanging loosely enough to be drawn behind the living pictures, so as to form backgrounds. A draped clothes-horse answered the same purpose for the lower pictures. All of this explanation and more was given by Don and Dorry at the house-picnic to eager listeners who wished to get up exactly such a picture-gallery at their own homes some evening. But while they were talking about it somebody at the piano struck up a march—"Mendelssohn's Wedding March"—and almost before they knew it the guests found themselves marching to the music two by two in a procession across the great square hall, now lighted by a bright blaze in its open fireplace.

THE LAST VIEW OF THE PICTURE-GALLERY.

Donald and Dorry joined the merry line, wondering what was about to happen—when to their great surprise (ah, that sly Uncle George! and that innocent Liddy!) the double doors leading into the dining-room were flung open, and there, sparkling in the light of a hundred wax-candles, was a collation fit for Cinderella and all her royal court. I shall not attempt to describe it, for fear of forgetting to name some of the good things. Imagine what you will, and I do believe there was something just like it, or quite as good, upon that delightful table, so beautiful with its airy, fairy-like structures of candied fruits, frostings, and flowers; its jagged rock of ice where chickens and turtles, made of ice-cream, were resting on every peak and cranny; its gold-tinted jellies, and its snowy temples. Soon, fairy-work and temple yielded to ruthless boys, who crowded around with genteel eagerness to serve the girls with platefuls of delicacies, quite ignoring the rolling eye-balls of two little colored gentlemen who had been sent up from town with the feast, and who had fully expected to do the honors. Meanwhile Liddy, in black silk gown and the Swiss muslin apron which Dorry had bought for her in the city, was looking after the youngest guests, resolved that the little dears should not disgrace her motherly care by eating too much, or by taking the wrong things.

"Not that anything on that table could hurt a chicken," she said softly to Charity Cora, as she gave a bit of sponge-cake and a saucer of blanc-mange to little Isabel, "Mr. George and I looked out for that; but their dear little stomachs are so risky, you know, one can't be too careful. That's the reason we were so particular to serve out sandwiches and substantials early in the day, you know. But sakes! there's that molasses candy! I can't help worrying about it."

Charity Cora made no reply beyond a pleasant nod, for, in truth, conversation had no charms for her just then. If Donald had found you, hungry reader, modestly hidden in a corner, and with a masterly bow had handed you that well-laden plate, would you have felt like talking to Liddy?

But Liddy didn't mind. She was too happy with her own thoughts to notice trifles. Besides, Sailor Jack just at that moment came to lay a fresh log on the hall fire, and that gave her an opportunity to ask him if he ever had seen young folks "having a delighteder time."

"Never, Mistress Blum! Never!" was his emphatic, all-sufficient response.

At this very moment, Gory Danby, quite unconscious of the feast up stairs, was having his own private table in the kitchen. Having grown hungry for his usual supper of bread and milk, he had stolen in upon Norah and begged for it so charmingly, that she was unable to resist him. Imagine his surprise when, drowsily taking his last mouthful, he saw Fandy rush into the room with a plate of white grapes.

"Gory Danby!" exclaimed that disgusted brother, "I'm 'shamed of you! What you stuffin' yourse'f with common supper for when there's a party up stairs? Splendid things, all made of sugar! Pull off that bib, now, an' come along!"

GORY'S PRIVATE TABLE.

Again the march struck up. Feasting was over. The boys and girls, led by Uncle George, who seemed the happiest boy of all, went back to the parlor, which, meanwhile, had been rearranged, and there, producing a great plump tissue-paper bag, he hung it to the chandelier that was suspended from the middle of the parlor ceiling. I should like to tell you about this chandelier, how it was covered with hundreds of long, three-sided glass danglers that swung, glittered, and flashed in a splendid way, now that all its wax candles were lighted: but that would interrupt the account of the paper bag. This bag was full of something, they were sure. Uncle George blindfolded Josie Manning with a handkerchief, and putting a stick in her hand, told her to turn around three times and then try to strike the bag with the stick.

"Stand back, everybody," cried Donald, as she made the last turn. "Now, hit hard, Josie! Hard enough to break it!"

Josie did hit hard. But she hit the air just where the bag didn't hang; and then the rest laughed and shouted, and begged to be blindfolded, sure that they could do it. Mr. Reed gave each a chance in turn, but each failed as absurdly as Josie. Finally, by acclamation, the bandage was put over Dorothy's dancing eyes, though she was sure she never, never could—and lo! after revolving like a lovely Chinese top, the blindfolded damsel, with a spring, and one long, vigorous stroke, tore the bag open from one side to the other. Down fell the contents upon the floor—pink mottoes, white mottoes, blue mottoes, and mottoes of gold and silver paper, all fringed and scalloped and tied with ribbons, and every one of them plump with sugar-almonds or some good kind of candy. How the guests rushed and scrambled for them!—how Fandy Danby fairly rolled over the other boys in his delight!—and how the young folks tore open the pretty papers, put the candy into their pockets, and shyly handed or sent the printed mottoes to each other! Fandy, in his excitement, handed a couplet to a pretty little girl with yellow hair, and then seeing her pout as she looked at it, ran over to her again with a quick "Let me see't. What does it say?" She held out the little bit of paper without letting it go, and Fandy seizing it at the other end, read laboriously and in laughing dismay:

"You-are-the-nicest-boy-I-know,
And-this-is-just-to-tell-you-so."

He recovered himself instantly, however, and wagging his handsome little head at her, exclaimed emphatically:

"Girl, girl, don't you see, I meant girl! It's pleposterous to think I meant boy, cause you ain't one, don't you see. Mottoes is awful foolish, anyway. Come over in the hall and see the gol'-fishes swimmin' in the 'quarium,"—and off they ran together, as happy as birds.

Then came a dance—the Lancers. Two thirds of the young company, including Don and Dorry, attended the village dancing-school; and one and all "just doted on the Lancers," as Josie Manning said. Uncle George, knowing this, had surprised the D's by secretly engaging two players,—for piano-forte and violin,—and their well-marked time and spirited playing put added life into even the lithe young forms that flitted through the rooms. Charity looked on in rapt delight, the more so as kind Sailor Jack already had carried the sleepy and warmly bundled Isabel home to her mother.

One or two more dances brought this amusement to an end, and then, after a few moments of rest came a startling and mysterious order to prepare for the

"THANK-YOU" GAME!

"What in the world is that?" asked the young folk of Don and Dorry; and their host and hostess candidly admitted that they hadn't the slightest idea what it was; they never had heard of it before.

"Well, then, how can we play it?" insisted the little spokes-people.

"I don't know," answered Dorry, looking in a puzzled way at the door.

"All join hands and form a circle!" cried a voice.

Every one arose, and soon the circle stood expectant.

"Your dear great-great fairy godmother is coming to see you," continued the voice. "She is slightly deaf, but you must not mind that."

"Oh, no, no!" cried the laughing circle, "not in the least."

"She brings her white gnome with her," said the invisible speaker; "and don't let him know your names, or he will get you into trouble."

"No, no, no!" cried the circle, wildly.

A slight stirring was heard in the hall, the doors opened, and in walked the big fairy godmother and her white gnome.

She was a tall, much bent old woman, in a ruffled cap, a peaked hat, and a long red cloak. He, the gnome, wore red trousers and red sleeves. The rest of his body was dressed in a white pillow-case with arm-holes cut in it. It was gathered at his belt; gathered also by a red ribbon tied around the throat; the corners of the pillow-case tied with narrow ribbon formed his ears, and there was a white bandage over his eyes, and a round opening for his mouth. The godmother dragged in a large sack, and the gnome bore a stick with bells at the end.

"Let me into the ring, dears," squeaked the fairy godmother.

"Let me into the ring, dears," growled the white gnome.

The circle obeyed.

"Now, my dears," squeaked the fairy godmother, "I've brought you a bagful of lovely things, but, you must know, I am under an enchantment. All I can do is to let you each take out a gift when your turn comes, but when you send me a 'Thank-you,' don't let my white gnome know who it is, for if he guesses your name you must put the gift back without opening the paper. But if he guesses the wrong name, then you may keep the gift. So now begin, one at a time. Keep the magic circle moving until my gnome knocks three times."

Around went the circle, eager with fun and expectation. Suddenly the blindfolded gnome pounded three times with his stick, and then pointed it straight in front of him, jingling the little bells. Tommy Budd was the happy youth pointed at.

"Help yourself, my dear," squeaked the fairy godmother, as she held the sack toward him. He plunged his arm into the opening and brought out a neat paper parcel.

"Hey! What did you say, dear?" she squeaked. "Take hold of the stick."

Tommy seized the end of the stick, and said, in a hoarse tone, "Thank you, ma'am."

"That's John Stevens," growled the gnome. "Put it back! put it back!"

But it wasn't John Stevens, and so Tommy kept the parcel.

The circle moved again. The gnome knocked three times, and this time the stick pointed to Dorry. She tried to be polite, and direct her neighbor's hand to it, but the godmother would not hear of that.

"Help yourself, child," she squeaked; and Dorry did. The paper parcel which she drew from the sack was so tempting and pretty, all tied with ribbon, that she really tried very hard to disguise her "Thank you," but the blindfolded gnome was too sharp for her.

"No, no!" he growled. "That's Dorothy Reed. Put it back! put it back!"

And Dorry, with a playful air of protest, dropped the pretty parcel into the bag again.

So the merry game went on; some escaped detection and saved their gifts; some were detected and lost them; but the godmother would not suffer those who had parcels to try again, and therefore, in the course of the game, those who failed at first succeeded after a while. When all had parcels, and the bag was nearly empty, what did that old fairy do but straighten up, throw off her hat, cap, false face, and cloak—and if it wasn't Uncle George himself, very red in the face, and very glad to be out of his prison. Instantly one and all discovered that they had known all along it was he.

"Ha! ha!" they laughed; "and now—" starting in pursuit—"let's see who the white gnome is!"

They caught him at the foot of the stairs, and were not very much astonished when Ed Tyler came to light.

"That is a royal game!" declared some. "Grand!" cried others. "Fine!" "First-rate!" "Glorious!" "Capital!" "As good as Christmas!" said the rest. Then they opened their parcels, and there was great rejoicing.

Uncle George, as Liddy declared, wasn't a gentleman to do things by halves, and he certainly had distinguished himself in the "Thank-you" game. Every gift was worth having. There were lovely bon-bon boxes, pretty trinkets, penknives, silver lead-pencils, paint-boxes, puzzles, thimbles, and scissors, and dozens of other nice things.

What delighted "Oh, oh's!" and merry "Ha, ha's!" rang through that big parlor. The boys who had thimbles, and the girls who had balls, had great fun displaying their prizes, and trying to "trade." After a deal of laughter and merry bargaining, the gifts became properly distributed, and then the piano and violin significantly played "Home, Sweet Home!" Soon sleigh-bells were jingling outside; Jack was stamping his feet to knock the snow off his boots. Mr. McSwiver, too, was there, driving the Manning farm-sled, filled with straw; and several turn-outs from the village were speeding chuck-a-ty-chuck, cling, clang, jingle-y-jing, along the broad carriage-way.

Ah! what a bundling-up time! What scrambling for tippets, shawls, hoods, and cloaks; what laughter and frolic; what "good-byes" and "good-byes;" what honest "thank-you's" to Mr. Reed; and what shouting and singing and hurrahing, as the noisy sleigh-loads glided away, and above all, what an "Oh, you dear, dear, dear Uncle George!" from Dorry, as she and Donald, standing by Mr. Reed's side, heard the last sleigh jingle-jingle from the door.

And then the twins went straight to bed, slept sweetly, and dreamed till morning of the house-picnic? Not so. Do you think the D's could settle down so quietly as that? True, Uncle George soon went to his room. Liddy and Jack hied their respective ways, after "ridding up," as she expressed it, and fastening the windows. Norah and Kassy trudged sleepily to bed; the musicians and colored waiters were comfortably put away for the night. But Donald and Dorothy, wide awake as two robins, were holding a whispered but animated conversation in Dorry's room.

"Wasn't it a wonderful success, Don?"

"Never saw anything like it," said Donald. "Every one was delighted; Uncle's a perfect prince. He was the life of everything too. But what is it? What did you want to show me?"

"I don't know, myself, yet," she answered. "It fell out of an old trunk that we've never looked into or even seen before; at least, I haven't. Some of the boys dragged the trunk out from away back under the farthest roof-end of the garret. It upset and opened. Robby Cutler picked up the things and tumbled them in again in a hurry; but I saw the end of a parcel and pulled it out, and ran down here to see what it was. But my room was full of girls (it was when nearly all of you boys were out in the barn, you know), and so I just threw it into that drawer. Somehow, I felt nervous about looking at it alone."

"Fetch it out," said Donald.

She did so. They opened the parcel together. It contained only two or three old copy-books.

"They're Uncle George's when he was a little boy," exclaimed Dorry, in a tone of interest, as she leaned over Donald, but with a shade of disappointment in her tone; for what is an old copy-book?

"It's not copy-writing at all," said Don, peering into the first one, "why, it's a diary!" and turning to look at the cover again, he read, "'Kate Reed.' Why, it's Aunt Kate's!"

"Aunt Kate's diary? Oh, Don, it can't be!" cried Dorry, as, pale with excitement, she attempted to take it from her brother's hands.

"No, Dorry," he said, firmly; "we must tie it up again. Diaries are private; we must speak to Uncle about it before we read a word."

"So we must, I suppose," assented Dorry, reluctantly. "But I can't sleep a wink with it in here." Her eyes filled with tears.

"Don't cry, Dot; please don't," pleaded Don, putting his arm around her. "We've been so happy all day, and finding this ought to make you all the happier. It will tell us so much about Aunt Kate, you know."

"No, Don, it will not. I feel morally sure Uncle will never let us read it."

"For shame, Dorry. Just wait, and it will be all right. You found the book, and Uncle will be delighted, and we'll all read it together."

Dorry wiped her eyes.

"I don't know about that," she said, decidedly, and much to her brother's amazement. "I found it, and I want to think for myself what is best to be done about it. Aunt Kate didn't write it for everybody to read; we'll put it back in the bureau. My, how late it must be growing," she continued, with a shiver, as, laying the parcel in, she closed the drawer so softly that the hanging brass handles hardly moved. "Now, good-night, Donald."

"What a strange girl you are," he said, kissing her bright face. "Over a thing in an instant. Well, good-night, old lady."

"Good-night, old gentleman," said Dorry, soberly, as she closed the door.

CHAPTER XVI.

A DISCOVERY IN THE GARRET.

"Is Miss Dorothy in?"

"I think she is, Miss Josie. And yet, it seems as if she went over to the Danbys'. Take a seat, Miss, and I'll see if she's in her room."

"Oh, no, Kassy! I'll run up myself and surprise her."

So the housemaid went down stairs to her work, for she and Liddy were "clearin' up" after the house-picnic of the day before; and Josie Manning started in search of Dorry.

"I'll look in her cosey corner first," said Josie to herself.

Only those friends who knew the Reeds intimately had seen Dorry's cosey corner. Mere acquaintances hardly knew of its existence. Though a part of the young lady's pretty bedroom, it was so shut off by a high folding screen that it formed a complete little apartment in itself. It was decorated with various keepsakes and fancy articles—some hanging upon the walls, some standing on the mantelshelf, and some on the cabinet in which she kept her "treasures." With these, and its comfortable lounge and soft Persian rug, and, more than all, with its bright little window over-head, that looked out upon the tree-tops and the gable-roof of the summer-kitchen, it was indeed a most delightful place for the little maid. And there she studied her lessons, read books, wrote letters, and thought out, as well as she could, the plans and problems of her young life. In very cold weather, a wood fire on the open hearth made the corner doubly comfortable, and on mild days, a dark fire-board and a great vase of dried grasses and red sumac branches made it seem to Dorry the brightest place in the world.

Josie was so used to seeing her friend there that now, when she looked in and found it empty, she turned back. The cosey corner was not itself without Dorry.

"She's gone to the Danbys' after all," thought Josie, standing irresolute for a moment.

"I'll run over and find her. No, I'll wait here."

So stepping into the cosey corner again, but shrugging her pretty shoulders at its loneliness, she tossed her hood and shawl upon the sofa, and, taking up a large book of photographic views that lay there, seated herself just outside the screen, where she would be sure to see Dorry if she should enter the room. Meantime, a pleasant heat came in upon her from the warm hall, not a sound was to be heard, and she was soon lost in the enjoyment of the book, which had carried her across the seas, far into foreign scenes and places.

But Dorry was not at the Danbys' at all. She was over-head, in the garret, kneeling beside a small leather trunk, which was studded with tarnished brass nails.

How dusty it was!

"I don't believe even Liddy knew it was up here," thought Dorry, "for the boys poked it out from away, 'way back under the rafters. If she had known of it, she would have put it with the rest of the trunks."

Dorry laid the dusty lid back carefully, noting, as she did so, that it was attached to the trunk by a strip of buff leather inside, extending its entire length, and that its buff-paper lining was gay with sprays of pink rose-buds. In one of the upper corners of the lid was a label bearing this inscription:

"Oh! it's Aunt Kate's own writing!" exclaimed Dorry, under her breath, as, still kneeling, she read the words.

"'From Papa,'" she repeated slowly,—"her Papa; that was Donald's and my Grandfather. And she wrote this in October, 1849—ten whole years before we were born! and when she was only a little girl herself!"

Then, with reverent hands Dorry lifted the top article—a soft, pink muslin dress, which had a narrow frill of yellowish lace, basted at the neck. It seemed to have been cast aside as partly worn out. Beneath this lay a small black silk apron, which had silk shoulder-straps, bordered with narrow black lace, and also little pockets trimmed with lace. Dorry, gently thrusting her hand into one of these pockets, drew forth a bit of crumpled ribbon, some fragments of dried rose-leaves, and a silver thimble marked "K. R." She put it on her thimble-finger; it fitted exactly.

"Oh dear!" thought Dorry, as, with flushed cheeks and quick-beating heart, she looked at the dress and apron on her lap, "I wish Don would come!" Then followed a suspicion that perhaps she ought to call him, and Uncle George too, before proceeding further; but the desire to go on was stronger. Aunt Kate was hers,—"my aunty, even more than Don's," she thought, "because he's a boy, and of course doesn't care so much;" and then she lifted a slim, white paper parcel, nearly as long as the trunk. It was partly wrapped in an old piece of white Canton crape, embroidered with white silk stars at regular intervals. Removing this, Dorry was about to take off the white paper wrapper also, when she caught sight of some words written on it in pencil.

"Dear Aunt Kate!" thought Dorry, intensely interested; "how carefully she wrapped up and marked everything! Just my way." And she read:

My dear little Delia: I am fourteen to-day, too old for dolls, so I must put you to sleep and lay you away. But I'll keep you, my dear dolly, as long as I live, and if I ever have a dear little girl, she shall wake you and play with you and love you, and I promise to name her Delia, after you. Kate Reed. August, 1852.

With a strange conflict of feeling, and for the moment forgetting everything else, Dorry read the words over and over, through her tears; adding, softly: "Delia! That's why my little cousin was named Delia."

And, as she slowly opened the parcel, it almost seemed to her that Cousin Delia, Aunt Kate's own little girl, had come back to life and was sitting on the floor beside her, and that she and Delia always would be true and good, and would love Aunt Kate for ever and ever.

But the doll, Delia, recalled her. How pretty and fresh it was!—a sweet rosy face, with round cheeks and real hair, once neatly curled, but now pressed in flat rings against the bare dimpled shoulders. The eyes were closed, and when Dorry sought for some means of opening them, she found a wire evidently designed for that purpose. But it had become so rusty and stiff that it would not move. Somehow the closed eyes troubled her, and before she realized what she was doing, she gave the wire such a vigorous jerk that the eyes opened—bright, blue, glad eyes, that seemed to recognize her.

"Oh, you pretty thing!" exclaimed Dorry, as she kissed the smiling face and held it close to her cheek for a moment. "Delia never can play with you, dear; she was drowned, but I'll keep you as long as I live—Who's that? Oh, Don, how you startled me! I am so glad you've come."

"Why, what's the matter, Dot?" he asked, hurrying forward, as she turned toward him, with the doll still in her arms. "Not crying?"

"Oh, no, no, I'm not crying," she said, hastily wiping her eyes, and surprised to find them wet. "See here! This is Delia. Oh, Don, don't laugh. Stop, stop!"

Checking his sudden mirth, as he saw Dorry's emotion, and glancing at the open trunk, which until now had escaped his notice, he began to suspect what was the matter.

"Is it Aunt Kate's?" he asked, gravely.

"Yes, Don; Aunt Kate's doll when she was a little girl. This is the trunk that I told you about—the one that the diary fell out of."

A strong, boyish step was heard coming up the garret stairs: "Who is it? Run, Don, don't let any one come up here!" begged Dorry.

"It's Ed Tyler,—Hold up, Ed!" cried Don, obediently. "I'll be there in a minute." Then hurriedly kissing Dorry, and with a hearty "Cheer up, little sister!" he was gone.

Don's pleasant tone and quick step changed the current of Dorry's thoughts. More than this, a bright beam of sunlight now shone through the dusty window. Sobbing no longer, she carefully wrapped the doll in the same paper and piece of silk that had held it for so many years. As she arose, holding the parcel in her hand, the pink dress and black silk apron on her lap fell to the floor.

A sudden thought came to her. Dorry never could remain sad very long at a time. She hastily opened the parcel again.

"Lie down there, Delia dear," she said, gently placing the doll on the rose-buds of the still open trunk-lid. "Lie down there, till I put on these things. I'm going to take you down to see your uncle!"

"Won't he be astonished though!" murmured Dorry, as, half smiling, half sighing, she took off her dress in great excitement, and put on, first the pink muslin, and then the black silk apron, fastening them at the back as well as she could, with many a laborious twist and turn of her white arms, and with a half-puzzled consciousness that the garments were a perfect fit.

The dress, which was high at the neck, had short sleeves, and was gathered to a belt at the waist. Tying the apron at the back, so that the ends of its black ribbon bow hung down over the full pink skirt, she proceeded to adjust the silk straps that, starting in front at the belt, went over the shoulders and down again at the back.

As she did this, and perceived that each strap was wide on the top and tapered toward the belt, it struck her that the effect must be quite pretty. Bending to take up Delia, she saw, for the first time, among the bits of calico and silk lying in the bottom of the trunk, what proved to be a wide-brimmed straw hat. In another moment it was on her head, and with a quick little laugh, she caught up Delia and ran down the stairs.

Looking neither to right nor left, Dorry sped down the next flight; across the hall, on tiptoe now, and so on to the study door, which stood ajar just enough to admit her slight figure.

Mr. Reed, who sat at the table busily writing, did not even look up when she entered.

"How d'ye do?" she exclaimed, courtesying to her uncle, with the doll in her arms.

He sprang to his feet in amazement.

"Don't be frightened. It's only Dorry. I just wanted to surprise you! See," she continued, as he stood staring wildly at her, "I found all these things up stairs. And look at the dolly!"

By this time the hat had fallen off, and she was shaking her tumbled hair at him in a vehement manner, still holding Delia in her extended arms.

"Good-bye, Ed!" rang out Donald's clear voice from the piazza, and in an instant he was looking through the study window, much surprised to see a quaint little pink figure folded in Uncle George's embrace, while Dorry's voice was calling from somewhere: "Be careful! Be careful! You'll break Delia!"

Ed Tyler, sauntering homeward, met Josie Manning on her way to the Danbys'. "I think Dorry has gone to see Charity Danby," she said, "and I'm going after her. I've been waiting at her house, ever so long."

"I've been at Don's too," said Ed. "Just come from there."

Josie laughed. "As if I didn't know that," she said. "Why, I was in Dorry's room all the time. First I heard Don run up to the garret for something, then you went up after him, and then you both passed down again, and out upon the piazza. I suppose you went to the old carriage-house, as usual, didn't you?"

JOSIE MANNING WAITS FOR DORRY. (See [page 156].)

"Of course we did. We're turning it into a first-class gymnasium. Mr. Reed has given it to Don outright, and I tell you it will be a big thing. Jack's helping us. Don has saved up lots of pocket-money, and Mr. Reed gives him all the lumber he wants. Just you wait. But, by the way, Dorry isn't out. Don told me himself she was rummaging up in the garret."

"Why, that's queer!" was Josie's surprised exclamation. "Then it must have been Dorry who ran down stairs. It couldn't be though; some one, with a hat on and a short-sleeved pink dress, went by like a flash."

"Don't you know Dorry Reed yet?" laughed Ed, "she is always dressing up. Why, one day when I was there, she came into Don's room dressed like an old woman,—cap, crutch, corked wrinkles and all complete; never saw anything like it. What a little witch she is!"

"I think she's an angel!" said Josie, warmly.

"A pretty lively angel!" was Ed's response.

But the tone of admiration was so genuine that it satisfied even Josie Manning.

"Well!" exclaimed Donald, noting Dorry's strange costume, as he entered the room, after shouting a second good-by to Ed Tyler.

"Well!" echoed Dorry, freeing herself from her uncle's arms, and with a little jump facing Donald,—"what of it? I thought I'd pay Uncle a visit with my pretty doll-cousin here" (hugging Delia as she spoke), "and he started as if I were a ghost. Didn't you, Uncle?"

"I suppose I did," assented Mr. Reed, with a sad smile. "In fact, Dorry, I may as well admit, that what is fun to you, happened, for once, not to be fun to me."

"But it wasn't fun to me!" cried that astonishing Dorry. "It was—it was—tell him, Don; you know."

There was no need for Don to speak. Dorry's flushed cheeks, shining eyes, and excited manner told their own story; and both her brother and uncle, because they knew her so well; felt quite sure that in a moment Dorothy's own self would have a word to say.

Still folding the dolly to her heart and in both arms, and with the yearning look of a little child, the young girl, without moving from the middle of the room, looked wistfully toward the window, as though she saw outside some one whom she loved, but who could not or would not come to her. Then she stepped toward her uncle, who had seated himself again in the big chair, and laying her hand upon his shoulder, said earnestly:

"Uncle, I've been brought nearer to Aunt Kate to-day than ever in my life before, and the lonely feeling is almost all gone. I found a little old trunk, far back under the rafters, with her doll in it, her clothes and her writing; and now I see how real she was,—not like a dream, as she used to seem, but just one of us. You know what I mean."

"A trunk, Dorry! What? Where?" was all the response Uncle George made, as, hastening from the room, he started for the garret, keeping ahead of the others all the way.

CHAPTER XVII.