overlid of the great
high feather-bed in the little spare room, and then Mrs. Kirk sat them
down to three little blue bowls of bread-and-milk, remarking, "shure you
must be after being hungry from your long drive," and the children ate
it with far more relish than home bread-and-milk was ever eaten.

"Now I'm doubting," said Patrick, standing with his back to the
cooking-stove and with a corn-cob pipe in his mouth, "if it's the style
to have bread-and-milk at 'At Homes' in the city."

"Patrick," answered Tattine seriously, "we do not want this to be a
city 'At Home.' I don't care for them at all. Everybody stays for just
a little while, and everybody talks at once, and as loudly as they can,
and at some of them they only have tea and a little cake or something
like that to eat," and Tattine glanced at the kitchen-table over by the
window with a smile and a shake of the head, as though very much better
pleased with what she saw there. A pair of chickens lay ready for
broiling on a blue china platter. Several ears of corn were husked ready
for the pot they were to be boiled in. A plate of cold potatoes looked
as though waiting for the frying-pan, and from the depths of a glass
fruit-dish a beautiful pile of Fall-pippins towered up to a huge red
apple at the top.

"Indade, thin, but we'll do our best," said Mrs. Kirk, "to make it as
different from what you be calling a city 'At Home' as possible, and now
suppose you let Patrick take you over our bit of a farm, and see what
you foind to interest you, and I'm going wid yer, while ye have a look
at my geese, for there's not the loike of my geese at any of the big
gentlemin's farms within tin miles of us."

And so, nothing loth, the little party filed out of the house, and after
all hands had assisted in unharnessing Barney and tying him into his
stall, with a manger-full of sweet, crisp hay for his dinner, they
followed Mrs. Kirk's lead to the little pond at the foot of the
apple-orchard. And then what did they see! but a truly beautiful great
flock of white geese. Some were sailing gracefully around the pond, some
were pluming their snowy breasts on the shore beside it, and three, the
finest of them all, and each with a bow of ribbon tied round its long
neck, were confined within a little picket-fence apart from the others.

"Why, what beauties, Mrs. Kirk!" exclaimed Tattine, the minute she spied
them, "and what are the ribbons for? Do they mean they have taken a
prize