it was his best beaver!

"Why, dear papa, it is Sunday!"

"Dear me, so it is!" The good man was evidently much discomfited. "Ah!
Lucy dear, that shows the effect and force of bad habit; that is to
say, of habit, (for the simple act cannot be called bad), on the wrong
day."

"You cannot call throwing your best hat in the mud a good habit on _any_
day," said Mrs Sudberry, with the air of a woman who regarded her
husband's chance of mending as being quite hopeless.

"It was only forgetfulness, my dear!" said the worthy man, putting his
hat quite meekly on the back of his head, and pushing forward in order
to avoid further remarks. Coming to a hollow of the road, they found
that it was submerged a foot deep by the river, which had been swollen
into a small lake at that spot. There was much trouble here.
McAllister, with native gallantry, offered to carry the ladies over in
his arms; but the ladies would not listen to the proposal, with the
exception of Tilly, who at once accepted it gladly. The rest succeeded
in scrambling along by the projecting stones at the base of the wall
that ran alongside of the road, and gained the other side, after many
slips, much alarm, and sundry screams.

"Oh, you _darling_!" cried Tilly, suddenly. She pointed to a hole in
the wall, out of which peeped the most wide-awake weasel that ever
lived. Its brown little head and sharp nose moved quickly about with
little jerks, and its round lustrous black eyes seemed positively to
glitter with surprise, (perhaps it was delight), at the Sudberry Family.
Of course Jacky rushed at it with a yell--there was a good deal of the
terrier in Jacky--and of course the weasel turned tail, and vanished
like a flash of light.

When they came to the narrowest part of the pass which opened out of
their own particular valley--Rasselas Vale, as Lucy had named it--Tilly
was fortunate enough to set eyes on another "darling," which, in the
shape of a roe deer, stood, startled and trembling, in the centre of the
pass. They came on it so suddenly that it seemed to have been paralysed
for a moment. A shout from the imp, however, quickly dissolved the
spell; with one graceful bound it cleared the wall, and was far away
among the brackens on the mountain-side before the party had recovered
from their delight and surprise at having met a real live wild deer,
face to face, and not twenty yards distant, in this unexpected manner.

Nothing further occurred to arre