th a lapful of useless bribes,--apples, seed-cakes, an
illustrated Bible, a thermometer, an ear of red corn, and a large
stuffed green bird, the glory of the "keeping room" mantelpiece.

But a whole aviary of highly colored songsters would not have assuaged
Gay's woe at that moment. Every effort at conciliation was met with the
one plaint: "I want my Timfy! I want my Timfy!"

At the first sight of the beloved form, Gay flung the sacred bird into
the furthest corner of the room and burst into a wild sob of delight, as
she threw herself into Timothy's loving arms.

Fifteen minutes later peace had descended on the troubled homestead, and
Samantha went into the sitting-room and threw herself into the depths of
the high-backed rocker. "Land o' liberty! perhaps I ain't het-up!" she
ejaculated, as she wiped the sweat of honest toil from her brow and
fanned herself vigorously with her apron. "I tell you what, at five
o'clock I was dreadful sorry I hadn't took Dave Milliken, but now I'm
plaguey glad I didn't! Still" (and here she tried to smooth the green
bird's ruffled plumage and restore him to his perch under the revered
glass case), "still, children will be children."

"Some of 'em's considerable more like wild cats," said Miss Avilda
briefly.

"You just go upstairs now, and see if you find anything that looks like
wild cats; but 't any rate, wild cats or tame cats, we would n't dass
turn 'em ou'doors this time o' night for fear of flyin' in the face of
Providence. If it's a stint He's set us, I don't see but we've got to
work it out somehow."

"I'd rather have some other stint."

"To be sure!" retorted Samantha vigorously. "I never see anybody yet
that didn't want to pick out her own stint; but mebbe if we got just the
one we wanted it wouldn't be no stint! Land o' liberty, what's that!"

There was a crash of falling tin pans, and Samantha flew to investigate
the cause. About ten minutes later she returned, more heated than ever,
and threw herself for the second time into the high-backed rocker.

"That dog's been givin' me a chase, I can tell you! He clawed and
scratched so in the shed that I put him in the wood-house; and he went
and clim' up on that carpenter's bench, and pitched out that little
winder at the top, and fell on to the milk-pan shelf and scattered every
last one of 'em, and then upsot all my cans of termatter plants. But I
couldn't find him, high nor low. All to once I see by the dirt on the
floor