she squeezed the dough up through her fingers, and her cheeks glowed beneath the grimy tracks of tears. She floured her head, she floured her dress, she floured her shoes, all of which, as every one should know, is unavoidable in flouring pie-crust; and Mrs. Jones, who clearly proved herself to be a mother who could view things in the proper light, never once said, "There, nowjust see!"

When the pies, hers and the larger ones, were in the stove, and she had been washed off,

up the baking-things. You wait and help me when there's something nicer. You don't want to get your pretty fingers wet!"

But that was just what Annie did want very much. The rainbow foam, left to itself when the last dish had been rescued, sank

Annie sat in the rocking-chair and swung her feet, while Mrs. Jones washed up the rolling-board and -pins.

The wave of suds mounting about the big bare arms-how often had she yearned in secret for that feeling on her own!-moved her, fresh from achievement, to try if other wonders were in store, and slipping down, she edged up to the sink.

"Can't I wash, too, Mrs. Jones?" she hinted helpfully. "I think that I could do the cups."

Mrs. Jones's hands, stirring beneath the surface, came up with a splash, and set in the tray the bowl that had held the apples.

"There are no cups, ducky deary," she responded, scrubbing the bowl with the towel until its blue pagodas shone. "I'm only doing

down crackling, melting, as it had done so many times before her longing sight.

Oh, Mrs. Jones," she gasped, with a sigh that popped out of itself, "may n't I put my hand in there just once?"

Mrs. Jones dried her own hands, untied her apron, tied it round Annie's neck, and tucked up her sleeves.

"Well, then," she answered," muss awayuntil I get the floor wiped up."

Annie put in first one arm and then the other, with such contortions of her face as might have indicated pain to any one unversed in the extremes of joy.

"Oo-00-00!" she ejaculated as she brought up the arms, covered, warm, and dripping with bubbly reefs and shoals. She held them out, watching with devouring eyes un

til the last small dome glistening on the wet brown skin had broken, and then, with undiminished ardor, plunged them in again, ruffling the foundations of the deep that it might yield more bubbles on the top. Higher and yet higher, in answering abandon, rose the foam, until it would have cast itself, but for Mrs. Jones's intervention, upon her little gingham breast. The smell of pies, escaping from the oven, permeated all the air, but even it failed to reach her nose, filled with the intoxicating smell of suds.

While the chops were fried for lunch she stood beside the stove and held the pepper-box, and was allowed to take a dish, a small white dolphin with gilt fins, and get the jumbles from the jumblepot. Each one, crisp and sugared, had a gum-drop on the top, and at lunch she ate as many jumbles as she could and the gumdrops off some she could not eat.

"Do we have these often, Mrs. Jones?" she asked.

After lunch Annie dressed Little-Dolly in the frock she wore for afternoons, and sat with her on the top step of Mrs. Jones's back stoop. She wore Mrs. Jones's sunbonnet, as the sun was warm, and as she rocked

"Why," she exclaimed, running to shoo him back with indignant flapping of her skirt, "there 's Lowe's old rooster scratching up our onion-bed!"

The long summer afternoon passed by, and the sun, creeping home at last, slipped out of Mrs. Jones's yard with many a backward peep, and stopped to play a little longer in Mrs. Lowe's next door-perhaps because it was so lonely there without a child about.

Mrs. Lowe herself, in a pretty ruffled dress, sat by the window with her sewing. She looked up every now and then and cast a glance over toward the Jones's, and once she saw Annie and Little-Dolly on the step; and once she laughed outright, and then she very foolishly wiped her eyes as she saw the rooster come back through the fence.

to and fro, holding to Little-Dolly's lips a candy she had saved for her, she cast an occasional condescending glance toward the house across the fence.

"Little-Dolly by-by, Little-Dolly by-by!" she sang aloud, just to show, if anybody over there should happen to be listening, how very well content she was.

She was roused from the peacefulness that was a joint effect of sun and jumbles by a shrill alarm. A few yards before her, in the garden, pluming himself as though he, too, had a right to be there, stood bird with which she was acquainted.

Mr. Lowe came up the path toward teatime, glancing about among his shrubs, and stooping here and there to clip a dead twig with his penknife or to knock off a bug. He stopped beneath the window where his wife was sitting, and handing in his paper, began to train up one of the branches of the rosebush which had slipped out from its fastening against the house.

"Where's baby?" he demanded suddenly, for he missed something to which he was accustomed the charge in his direction, and the clasp of two small, stout arms.

"Annie has left us," Mrs. Lowe replied

regretfully. "She 's gone to live next door."

She rose to set the table, laying down her work, a petticoat that she was making, oddly, for Jones's little girl. She took from the cupboard, from mere force of habit, a tin tray, and a mug marked, “For a Good Child," and then, remembering that she was childless, put them back again.

After he had been sitting at the table for a moment, Mr. Lowe glanced at the place where the mug and tray should have been, and laid down his knife and fork as though to rise and go for something; but Mrs. Lowe looked up and asked how business had been, which turned the current of his thoughts. Business had been doing well that day, and there were several things to tell. When tea was over, he sat down beside the lamp and read his paper, while she cleared the supper-things away.

As she moved about, she could make out dimly the house next door, for it was growing dark outside. The Jones's shades were down, and a narrow chink of light under each, or a shadow now and then, was all that gave a clue to what was going on within. By and by a shade up-stairs was suddenly illumined, as though some one might be going to bed. Mrs. Lowe went to the window and stood with her face against the glass. When she came, at last, and sat down on the other side of the lamp, Mr. Lowe read her a bit of news here and there, as he

When she went up, a little later, she walked over to the crib and turned the covers down as usual, and taking from the desk a paper-weight, a silver elephant that always slept with Annie, -put him beneath the pillow, undoubtedly that he might feel no change. Then she herself went quietly to bed.

One might have fancied from her peacefulness that she was asleep; but she was not. She lay and listened, for she knew nothing of the saucer-pies and soapsuds, until the house grew still, and the night without loud with the chorus of innumerable things. And at last, above the sawing of the katydids, she heard it-the pattering that she had been expecting! She was aware of it afar off, for her ears were sharp, even before the gate squeaked, or the door; and when on the dark stair, where a bear is so liable to follow one, it turned into a scramble, she sat up and put out her arms.

"Mother, mother, mother," wept a little voice, and the cold nose and feet that followed it were endurable because so very precious, "I are n't really Jones's little girl!"

NE pleasant afternoon in early summer, I sat on my veranda, comfortably looking out over my bit of lawn, and feeling at peace with myself and the world. And I had no reason to feel otherwise. I was a young man with fair business prospects. I owned one of the prettiest houses on one of the prettiest streets of the pretty village of Brookdale. I possessed an unusually amiable wife and a usually amiable baby. I had plenty of friends and amusements, and there was nothing in my life that I wished out of it, and very little out of it that I wished in it.

And so I sat there, in my comfortable piazza-chair, quite contented to let the world go round, until dinner-time at least, without assistance on my part.

Soon my wife came out from the house, and appropriating another of the piazzachairs, joined me in a cordial and amiable silence. Gladys was a very beautiful young woman, and as she sat there in her fresh, pretty white dress and blue ribbons, it added greatly to my contentment to sit and gaze at her.

as

"There comes the postman," she said, she spied a gray uniform far down the street. "I'll bet you a box of candy he 'll bring us a letter."

As this identical bet was very often made, and as I always paid it irrespective of winning or losing, it was not an unduly exciting affair, and so I lazily replied, "I'll bet you a box of candy that he won't," and then we sat calmly awaiting his arrival at our gate. "I'm very happy to-day," said Gladys, with a soft sigh of content. "It is such a perfect day, and you 're home early, and Lovely Peg went to sleep like a little lamb, and I have n't a thing on earth to bother me. But I suppose just for that very reason something dreadful will happen to us soon." I have always wondered why people hold so strongly to the conviction that when one VOL. LXIV.-10.

is particularly contented and happy something unpleasant is about to occur. For ninety-nine times out of every hundred the unpleasant thing does not occur; but on the hundredth occasion, when it does happen, it blots out the other ninety-nine experiences, and we sigh and say, "That 's always the way!"

With a mild interest we watched the postman draw near, and as he turned in at our gate Gladys cried, "There, I 've won my bet!" with as much glee as if she would n't have claimed the wager in either case.

There was only one letter, and as I took it from the postman's hand I exclaimed, "Aunt Molly Millarkey!"

Is she dead?" asked Gladys, with a politely repressed hope in her voice.

Of course this hope, even though discreetly hidden, was a distinctly wicked one, but then you must remember that Gladys had never seen my Aunt Millarkey, and her name was to my wife only as the name of a future gold-mine. For at Aunt Millarkey's death I would fall heir to her large fortune, and though I had no desire that the old lady's taking-off should be in any manner hurried, yet her will, as a will, was exceedingly satisfactory to me.

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No," I replied to my wife's casual inquiry; "of course she is n't dead, or this letter would n't be in her handwriting, and besides, it would be a telegram."

"To be sure it would," said Gladys, "and then I would have lost my bet."

She came and sat on the arm of my chair while we read my aunt's letter together. It was the hundredth occasion! Something unpleasant had happened, for the letter informed us that my aunt wished, for the future, to make her home with us.

"Oh, Bert," said Gladys, with what sounded like a little moan, "we can't have her! We're so happy, just us two and Peggy. Don't let her come and spoil our home."

"It shall be as you say, dear," I replied; "but we must think it over, and look at it from all sides."

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