might go home with Cousin Frank that
evening. I pulled up the tombstone from the head of Caspar Hauser's
grave and made an epitaph on the other side for Bay. There might not be
another slate broken in the family for months. At the present rate of
mortality among my pensioners, it behooved me to be economical. I had
not time to indite such an elaborate testimonial to the worth of the
deceased as graced Caspar Hauser's last resting-place. Yet I thought
the tribute not amiss, and the drop into poetry elated me and
electrified my audience. The lines were engraved perpendicularly upon
the slate to give the rhyme effective room:--

"Alas! and Alack A DAY!
Poor Litle BAFFINS BAY!"

My visit lasted three days instead of one and a half. I brought back
with me something worthy of the pride that swelled my happy heart to
aching. One of Cousin Frank's men had taken two young hares alive, and
given them to his mistress a week ago, and she and Cousin Frank had
arranged a pleasant surprise for me. Before I had been in the house an
hour I was taken to the dining room to see the dear little things
already housed in a cage, made by the plantation carpenter. None of your
lemon-box makeshifts, but a strong case in the shape of a cottage, of
planed wood, painted white on the outside. There were two rooms in it
with a round door in the dividing wall. One was half full of soft,
sweet-smelling hay for Darby and Joan to sleep upon. Their names were
ready-made, too. The other room was a parlor where they were to eat and
to live in the daytime. Broad leather straps by which the box could be
carried were made to look like chimneys.

The whole family collected to admire my treasures when I got home, and
Mary 'Liza was so much interested in Darby and Joan that she brought up
her cats, Cinderella and Preciosa, to be introduced and make friends
with "their new cousins"--so she said. Cinderella was black-and-white,
Preciosa yellow-and-white, very large, and with long fur as soft and
fine as raw silk. Mary 'Liza put them down close to the cottage.

"You must be very good and never hurt either of the beautiful hares--you
hear?" she said, and we all looked on to see what they would do.

Bless your soul! they walked once around the cottage in a lazy,
indifferent, supercilious way, hardly glancing at their "new cousins,"
then Preciosa yawned, tiptoed back to her place on the rug, doubled her
toes in under her, and half closed her "greenery-yaller