enough of the kitchen in their own homes, prefer to enjoy themselves now
in the finer apartments.

[Illustration: THE CANDY-PULLING.]

We'll look into Mr. Reed's study, the door of which stands slightly
ajar. Amanda Danby is there alone. She is sitting in the master's big
chair with a volume of poems in her hand--forgetting the party,
forgetting that she has laboriously smoothed her curly hair for the
occasion, forgetting that she is wearing her precious drab merino--her
mother's wedding gown--now made over for the fourth time, forgetting the
new collar and pretty blue bow at her throat (Dorry's gifts), conscious
only that

"The bride kissed the goblet; the knight took it up,
He quaffed off the wine, and he threw down the cup.
She looked down to blush, and she looked up to sigh,
With a smile on her lips, and a tear in her eye.
He took her soft hand, ere her mother could bar,--
'Now tread we a measure!' said young Lochinvar."

Amanda smiles to herself as she turns the leaf, feeling that, after all,
there is a great deal of life and spirit in the world, and that
dish-pans, pots, and kettles are mere phantoms of the imagination. The
verse runs on so smoothly too. She could write whole books of poetry
herself if she only had gone somewhere and improved herself. Then, as
she reads on, the great, comfortable arm-chair, the soft carpet, the
well-filled book-shelves and the subdued light, give her a vague,
delightful sense of having improved herself already.

Let us look into the other rooms. No one in the parlor; the back
sitting-room, too, is deserted; the dining-room is locked for awhile;
but high up on the garret-stairs sit three wide-eyed, open-mouthed
youngsters listening to Ben Buster.

"True?" he is saying, "of course it's true; I knew the boy myself--Joe
Gunther, smart fellow. He's on a ranch, now, out in Californy. I'll tell
you how it was; he was living with a settler named Brown, 'way off in
Utah. Brown had three men besides Joe to help him,--sort of partnership,
I b'lieve, raising cattle. It was a desolate place, and the Indians were
troublesome. Brown nor his men never went outside the door without a
loaded gun, and they kept several more in the hut, always loaded, ready
for an attack. One morning, long before daylight, Joe heard a rumpus. He
was in bed,--none of your cots, but a bunk, like a shelf, fastened to
the inside of the stockade wal