ghter come in here, and mar wouldn't let her, and she
knows it," he said with superior virtue.

"But I asked her to come as I'm asking you," said Mr. Hamlin promptly,
"and don't you go back on your sister or you'll never be president of
the United States." With this he laid his hand on the boy's tow head,
and then, lifting himself on his pillow to a half-sitting posture, put
an arm around each of the children, drawing them together, with the doll
occupying the central post of honor. "Now," continued Mr. Hamlin, albeit
in a voice a little faint from the exertion, "now that we're comfortable
together I'll tell you the story of the good little boy who became a
pirate in order to save his grandmother and little sister from being
eaten by a wolf at the door."

But, alas! that interesting record of self-sacrifice never was told. For
it chanced that Melinda Bird, Mrs. Rivers's help, following the trail of
the missing children, came upon the open door and glanced in. There, to
her astonishment, she saw the domestic group already described, and to
her eyes dominated by the "most beautiful and perfectly elegant" young
man she had ever seen. But let not the incautious reader suppose that
she succumbed as weakly as her artless charges to these fascinations.
The character and antecedents of that young man had been already
delivered to her in the kitchen by the other help. With that single
glance she halted; her eyes sought the ceiling in chaste exaltation.
Falling back a step, she called in ladylike hauteur and precision, "Mary
Emmeline and John Wesley."

Mr. Hamlin glanced at the children. "It's Melindy looking for us,"
said John Wesley. But they did not move. At which Mr. Hamlin called out
faintly but cheerfully, "They're here, all right."

Again the voice arose with still more marked and lofty distinctness,
"John Wesley and Mary Em-me-line." It seemed to Mr. Hamlin that human
accents could not convey a more significant and elevated ignoring of
some implied impropriety in his invitation. He was for a moment crushed.

But he only said to his little friends with a smile, "You'd better go
now and we'll have that story later."

"Affer beckus?" suggested Mary Emmeline.

"In the woods," added John Wesley.

Mr. Hamlin nodded blandly. The children trotted to the door. It closed
upon them and Miss Bird's parting admonition, loud enough for Mr. Hamlin
to hear, "No more freedoms, no more intrudings, you hear."

The older culprit, H