rival,
although he was nearly three, and an active little tyrant at that.
Watching the bees was Betty's delight. Minding the baby, lolling under
the trees reading her books, gazing up into the great branches, and
all the time keeping an eye on the hives scattered about in the
garden,--nothing could be pleasanter.

Naturally Betty could not understand all she read in the books she
carried out from the library, for purely children's books were very
few in those days. The children of the present day would be dismayed
were they asked to read what Betty pondered over with avidity and
loved. Her father's library was his one extravagance, even though the
purchase of books was always a serious matter, each volume being
discussed and debated about, and only obtained after due preparation
by sundry small economies.

As for worldly possessions, the Ballards had started out with nothing
at all but their own two hands, and, as assets, well-equipped brains,
their love for each other, a fair amount of thrift, and a large share
of what Mary Ballard's old Grannie Sherman used to designate as
"gumption." Exactly what she intended should be understood by the word
it would be hard to say, unless it might be the faculty with which,
when one thing proved to be no longer feasible as a shift toward
progress and the making of a living for an increasing family, they
were enabled to discover other means and work them out to a productive
conclusion.

Thus, when times grew hard under the stress of the Civil War, and the
works of art representing many hours of Bertrand Ballard's keenest
effort lay in his studio unpurchased, and even carefully created
portraits, ordered and painstakingly painted, were left on his hands,
unclaimed and unpaid for, he quietly turned his attention to his
garden, saying, "People can live without pictures, but they must
eat."

So he obtained a few of the choicest of the quickly produced small
fruits and vegetables and flowers, and soon had rare and beautiful
things to sell. His clever hands, which before had made his own
stretchers for his canvases, and had fashioned and gilded with gold
leaf the frames for his own paintings, now made trellises for his
vines and boxes for his fruits, and when the price of sugar climbed to
the very top of the gamut, he created beehives on new models, and
bought a book on bee culture; ere long he had combs of delicious honey
to tempt the lovers of sweets.

But how came Bertrand Balla