s upon
the handle.

"Mamma!" cried Hendie, impetuously, one day, as he rushed in from a walk
with his attendant, "I _hate_ Mahala Harris! I wish you'd let me dress
myself, and go to walk alone, and send her off to Jericho!"

"Whereabouts do you suppose Jericho to be?" asked Faith, laughing.

"I don't know. It's where she keeps wishing I was, when she's cross, and
I want anything. I wish she was there!--and I mean to ask papa to send
her!"

"Go and take your hat off, Hendie, and have your hair brushed, and your
hands washed, and then come back in a nice quiet little temper, and
we'll talk about it," said Mrs. Gartney.

"I think," said Faith to her mother, as the boy was heard mounting the
stairs to the nursery, right foot foremost all the way, "that Mahala
doesn't manage Hendie as she ought. She keeps him in a fret. I hear them
in the morning while I am dressing. She seems to talk to him in a
taunting sort of way."

"What can we do?" exclaimed Mrs. Gartney, worriedly. "These changes are
dreadful. We might get some one worse. And then we can't afford to pay
extravagantly. Mahala has been content to take less wages, and I think
she means to be faithful. Perhaps if I make her understand how important
it is, she will try a different manner."

"Only it might be too late to do much good, if Hendie has really got to
dislike her. And--besides--I've been thinking--only, you will say I'm so
full of projects----"

But what the project was, Mrs. Gartney did not hear at once, for just
then Hendie's voice was heard again at the head of the stairs.

"I tell you, mother said I might! I'm going--down--in a nice--little
temper--to ask her--to send you--to Jericho!" Left foot foremost, a drop
between each few syllables, he came stumping, defiantly, down the
stairs, and appeared with all his eager story in his eyes.

"She plagues me, mamma! She tells me to see who'll get dressed first;
and if _she_ does, she says:

"'The first's the best,
The second's the same;
The last's the worst
Of all the game!'

"And if _I_ get dressed first--all but the buttoning, you know--she says:

"'The last's the best,
The second's the same;
The first's the worst
Of all the game!'

"And then she keeps telling me 'her little sister never behaved like me.'
I asked her where her little sister was, and she said she'd gone over
Jordan. I'm glad of it! I wish Mahala would go too!"

Mrs. Gartney smiled, and Faith could not