! I wish you knew him."

"If father's sick again," said Jasper, "we'll have him--he looks nice,
anyway--for father don't like the doctor over in Hingham--do you know
perhaps we'll come again next summer; wouldn't that be nice!"

"Oh!" cried the children rapturously; "do come, Jasper, do!"

"Well, maybe," said Jasper, "if father likes it and sister Marian and
her family will come with us; they do some summers. You'd like little
Dick, I know," turning to Phronsie. "And I guess all of you'd like all
of them," he added, looking at the group of interested listeners. "They
wanted to come this year awfully; they said--'Oh grandpapa, do let us go
with you and Jappy, and--"

"What!" said the children.

"Oh," said Jasper with a laugh, "they call me Jappy--its easier to say
than Jasper; ever so many people do for short. You may if you want to,"
he said looking around on them all.

"How funny!" laughed Polly, "But I don't know as it is any worse than
Polly or Ben."

"Or Phronsie," said Jappy. "Don't you like Jappy?" he said, bringing
his head down to her level, as she sat on the little stool at his feet,
content in listening to the merry chat.

"Is that the same as Jasper?" she asked gravely.

"Yes, the very same," he said.

When they parted--Jappy and the little Peppers were sworn friends; and
the boy, happy in his good times in the cheery little home, felt the
hours long between the visits that his father, when he saw the change
that they wrought in his son, willingly allowed him to make.

"Oh dear!" said Mrs. Pepper one day in the last of September--as a
carriage drawn by a pair of very handsome horses, stopped at their
door, "here comes Mr. King I do believe; we never looked worse'n we do
to-day!"

"I don't care," said Polly, flying out of the bedroom. "Jappy's with
him, mamma, and it'll be nice I guess. At any rate, Phronsie's clean as
a pink," she thought to herself looking at the little maiden, busy with
"baby" to whom she was teaching deportment in the corner. But there was
no time to "fix up;" for a tall, portly gentleman, leaning on his
heavy gold cane, was walking up from the little brown gate to the big
flat-stone that served as a step. Jasper and Prince followed decorously.

"Is this little Miss Pepper?" he asked pompously of Polly, who answered
his rap on the door. Now whether she was little "Miss Pepper" she never
had stopped to consider.

"I don't know sir; I'm Polly." And then she blushed bright as