l too early, Mamma. We've got a lot to do in our chicken house.
Mayn't we go out again for a little while, just for half an hour,
Mamma?"

"Well--for half an hour you may," said Mrs. Frisbie reluctantly,
consulting her watch. Away clattered the boys,--the girls looking after
them with envious eyes.

Presently Lulu slipped out and was gone a few minutes. She came back
sparkling, with her cheeks very rosy.

"Mamma," she cried, "what _do_ you think? David says if you haven't any
objections, we may each of us have a little garden down there behind the
asparagus beds. He'll make them for us, Mamma, he says, and we can plant
just what we like in them. O Mamma! don't have any objections--please."

"Will he really?" cried May. "I'll put peppergrass in mine,--and
parsley. Dinah says she never has as much parsley as she wants."

"Yes, and little green cucumbers," added Bertha,--"little teeny-weeny
ones, for pickles, you know. Dinah is always wishing she could get them,
but David never sends in any but big ones. O Mamma! do say yes. It'll be
so nice."

"Cucumbers! peppergrass! Well, you are the strangest children! Why don't
you have pinks and pansies and pretty things?"

"Oh, we will, and make bouquets for you, Mamma; only we thought of the
useful things first."

"Somehow you always do think of useful things first," murmured Mrs.
Frisbie. "However, have the gardens if you like. I'm sure I don't care."

The children's thanks were cut short by the click of a latch-key in the
hall-door.

"There's Papa!" cried Bertha; and, like three arrows dismissed from the
string, the children were off to greet him. It was always a joy to have
Papa come home.

He was looking grave as he opened the door, but his face lit up at once
at the sight of his little girls. Papa's face without a smile upon it
would have seemed a strange sight indeed to that household. It did cross
May's mind that evening that the smiles were not so merry as usual, and
that Papa seemed tired; but no one else noticed it, either then or on
the days that followed.

Bubbles are pretty things, but the keeping them in air grows wearisome
after a while. About this time the rainbow bubble set afloat by the kind
Fairy for the sleeping Prince began to misbehave itself. Contrary winds
seized it; it flew wildly, now here, now there; and, instead of sailing
steadily, it was first up, then down, then up again, but more down than
up. Prince John blew his hardest and did his b