nkless task before her. Master Will required a
great deal of preparation. His curls were gummed and tangled; his
fingers were inky, and suspiciously pitchy.

"You've been climbin' unknownst up that pine tree again, an' you a
told not to?" questioned Kathleen, examining the fingers keenly.

"Hush up, and go ahead!" was Will's rude answer.

"How _can_ you speak so?" reproved Emily, turning round upon Will,
while she tied back her hair with a band of blue ribbon.

"Fie, fie, sir!" cried displeased Kathleen, "going ahead" with great
energy, her mouth pursed up in disapproval of Master Will's manners,
while she washed, and combed, and curled, and took off and put on his
apparel.

"Where's your stockings, Master Will,--the blue stripes?"

"Dunno."

Will sat in a low chair, his stubby bare feet stuck out before him,
and his two hands actively employed as fly-catchers. Suddenly he
remembered having amused himself the day before in oiling his sled
runners, using the striped stockings for wipers; but he did not
trouble Kathleen just then with the tidings. The blue-striped
stockings were not found. Then came a difficulty with his new boots.

"Aow! they pinch!"

"Where, sir?"

Master Will, not being able to say exactly where, was left to get used
to the new boots as well as he could.

"Now see, here's your new suit; an' be careful with it, mind--careful
as iver was. It's me afternoon out; and if ye go tearin' the cloos on
ye, ye'll jist mind thim yersel, or else go in tatthers wid yer
grandmamma."

This speech had no more wholesome effect on Will than to cause him to
stick out his tongue at Emily, while Kathleen, standing behind him,
arranged his buttons and his drapery generally.

"Now, if you could only be as good as you're purty," exclaimed
Kathleen, wheeling Will suddenly round before his tongue was quite in
place again, "you'd do well enough."

With a few finishing touches to Emily's sash ribbon, Kathleen went off
to make her own gorgeous toilet for her afternoon out.

The dinner was next to be gotten through with. But that was not an
unpleasant hour to Will. After dinner the children were permitted by
their mother to amuse themselves under the shadow of the great elm
behind the house. She knew that with Emily this permission simply
meant liberty to sit quietly beneath the overhanging branches, gazing
dreamily over the soft summer landscape, or listening to the sweet
sounds that stirred the air around and a