than Bob
would have answered under the circumstances. "It is nice, though, I
must say!"

"`Nice' indeed!" replied he indignantly. "It is just like a girl to say
that. I call it `jolly,' nothing more nor less. There's no other word
to express what a fellow feels; and I do wonder, Nell, at your putting
it so tamely!"

The girl laughed out merrily at this; and her smiling face, wreathed in
dimples, expressed as much animation as her brother could have wished.

"Do forgive me, Bob," she cried. "You are quite right. It is `jolly,'
the fields flying by, the trees all jumping up when you least expect
them, the hills coming close, and--everything! I have noticed them all;
for, I've been looking out, too, Master Observer, and have eyes like
you, old chappie!"

"Ah, but you haven't seen all that I have," said Bob, mollified by
Nellie's sympathetic accord. "Look at those little woolly lambs, there,
frisking about, with their sedate old mothers standing by, watching the
train with wondering eyes--"

"Yes, I see, I see," said she, interrupting him. "What great big eyes
they have, to be sure! I declare, too, I can hear them `baa' above all
the noise of the railway!"

Just at that moment, the engine gave a shriek of its steam-whistle,
which startled the sheep and lambkins, sending them scuttling over to
the other end of the field, in company with a number of skittish heifers
and young colts, which kicked up their heels in such a funny way that
Bob and Nellie both burst out laughing together in concert, in one burst
as it were.

"Hullo, Nellie, look!" presently exclaimed Bob, who was the first to
recover himself. "All the horses have not run away. There is one old
fellow there, close to the line, who hasn't budged an inch."

"Perhaps he's the veteran of the field?" said Miss Nellie, rather
poetically. "He's an old war-horse, maybe, who has heard too many
clanging trumpet-calls and guns fired to be upset by the mere noise of
an engine, which is only a bugbear to the ignorant."

"Bosh!" cried Bob, who did not believe much in sentiment, `flummery' he
termed it. "Much more likely he's an old cart-horse, and is as well
accustomed to the row of the railroad as he is to the plough, and that's
the reason he took no notice of us as we dashed by. See, he's only a
little dot in the distance now."

They were running along at such a rate that every object which in turn
presented itself, first ahead of the train, then al