her crazy if he did not behave himself;" but Marcus still ran up stairs,
jumping up three steps at a time, with his heavy shoes, and sliding down
the balusters, hallooing as he went, as if he were riding a race in an
open meadow.

Meggy, a mischievous little girl of six, joined her shouts with those of
Marcus, while Harry, her next brother, was busy collecting all his new
playthings in the hall, that he might show them to "sister Hatty" as
soon as she arrived.

As drums and trumpets were among his favorite toys, they of course had
to be brought out, and thoroughly tried to prove that they were in
perfect order.

While all this tumult was going on in the hall, Mrs. Lee was vainly
trying to hush the continual cries of her little baby, who, though only
five weeks old, seemed to have remarkably strong lungs for its age, and
to promise to resemble the rest of the family in his willingness to use
them.

Mrs. Lee was not very strong, and she was getting quite worn out with
the screams of the baby, when old Aunt Barbara came stepping into the
nursery, and declared that she was certain if she could take the child a
moment, she could quiet it.

Aunt Barbara put the baby on her lap, and began to say to it some of the
queer old rhymes she had heard in her childhood, seventy years ago. It
is not likely that the baby understood aunt Barbara's funny stories, and
wanted to listen,--but this is certain, it stopped crying, and soon
closed its eyes and fell into a sweet sleep.

When there was silence in the nursery, the noise in the hall sounded all
the louder. Mrs. Lee stepped to the door quickly, as if she were going
to speak severely to the children, but something within her whispered
that they had no idea of the pain their frolic was giving, and that it
was joy about their sister's return that made them so unusually full of
glee. When Mrs. Lee reached the head of the stairs, her face had a sweet
motherly expression, and before she spoke, she could not help smiling
to see little Harry blowing away at his trumpet with all his might, and
marching up and down the hall as if he were a fat little soldier on
parade, while they jumped up and down, and screamed with delight, to see
how fast Marcus could move on his smooth-backed horse.

Mrs. Lee knew that in their present state of mind it would be next to
impossible to keep the children perfectly quiet, and she resolved to
employ them about something, that they might not waste their en