with bright-red patches of color? It is an old tomato-can; a robin has
built her nest in it; there are three dear little birds inside; the
mother-bird is away, and I wanted you to come before she returned. Isn't
it lucky that I should have found that? And here, in our own grounds?
I don't believe there was ever another robin who made her nest in a
tomato-can!"

Doubtless the two birds who had made that nest sincerely loved each
other; and there were at that moment a great many other birds, and a
great many men and women, in the same plight, but never anywhere did any
human being possess a soul so happy as that of Margaret at that moment.

"Roland," she said, "when I first knew you, you would not have noticed
such a little thing as that."

"I couldn't afford it," he said.

"It is the sweetest charm of all your triumphs!" said she.

"What is?" he asked.

"That you feel able to afford it now," answered Margaret.

Samuel Block and his wife Sarah found that life grew pleasanter as they
grew older. Fortunate winds had blown down to them from the distant
north; the substantial rewards of the enterprise were eminently
satisfactory, and the honors which came to them were not at all
unwelcome even to the somewhat cynical Samuel.

Sitting one evening with his wife before a cheering fire--for both of
them were wedded to the old-fashioned ways of keeping warm--Sammy laid
down the daily paper with a smile.

"There's an account here," he said, "of a lot o' fools who are goin' to
fit out a submarine-ship to try to go under the ice to the pole, as we
did. They may get there, and they may get back; they may get there, and
they may never get back; and they may never get there, and never get
back; but whichever of the three it happens to be, it'll be of no more
good than if they measured a mile to see how many inches there was in
it."

"Sammy," exclaimed Sarah, "I do think you are old enough to stop talkin'
such nonsense as that. To be sure, there was a good many things that I
objected to in that voyage to the pole. In the first place, there was
thirteen people on board, which was the greatest mistake ever committed
by a human explorin' party; and then, agin, there was no provision for
keepin' whales from bumpin' the ship, and if you knew the number of
hours that I laid awake on that Dipsey thinkin' what would happen if the
frolicsome whale determined not to be left alone, and should follow us
into narrow quarters, you would un