ch a comfort, when Mrs. Frey was kept
out late at the office, for the children to have Miss Guyosa come and
sit with them, telling stories or reading aloud; and they brought much
brightness into her life too.

Madame Coraline soon moved away, and, indeed, before another Christmas
the Freys had moved too--to a small cottage all their own, sitting in
the midst of a pretty rose-garden. Here often come Miss Guyosa and the
Professor, both welcome guests, and Conrad says the Professor makes love
to Miss Guyosa, but it is hard to tell.

One cannot keep up with two people who can tell jokes in four languages,
but the Professor has a way of dropping in as if by accident on the
evenings Miss Guyosa is visiting the Freys, and they do read the same
books--in four languages. There's really no telling.

When the Frey children are playing on the _banquette_ at their front
gate on sunny afternoons, the old organ-grinder often stops, plays a
free tune or two for them to dance by, smilingly doffs his hat to the
open window above, and passes on.

[Illustration: "THE PROFESSOR NOT ONLY SANG, BUT DANCED"]

LITTLE MOTHER QUACKALINA

LITTLE MOTHER QUACKALINA

STORY OF A DUCK FARM

CHAPTER I

The black duck had a hard time of it from the beginning--that is, from
the beginning of her life on the farm. She had been a free wild bird up
to that time, swimming in the bay, playing hide-and-seek with her
brothers and sisters and cousins among the marsh reeds along the bank,
and coquettishly diving for "mummies" and catching them "on the swim"
whenever she craved a fishy morsel. This put a fresh perfume on her
breath, and made her utterly charming to her seventh cousin, Sir Sooty
Drake, who always kept himself actually fragrant with the aroma of raw
fish, and was in all respects a dashing beau. Indeed, she was behaving
most coyly, daintily swimming in graceful curves around Sir Sooty among
the marsh-mallow clumps at the mouth of "Tarrup Crik," when the shot
was fired that changed all her prospects in life.

The farmer's boy was a hunter, and so had been his grandfather, and his
grandfather's gun did its work with a terrific old-fashioned explosion.

When it shot into the great clump of pink mallows everything trembled.
The air was full of smoke, and for a distance of a quarter of a mile
away the toads crept out of their hiding and looked up and down the
road. The chickens picking at the late raspberry bushes in the farmer's