nce, must needs set out to see how much was the matter.

I was dreaming an unutterably delicious dream. It was a summer
evening. The sun was of a tremendous size, and of a splendid
rose-colour. He was resting with his lower edge on the horizon, and
dared go no farther, because all the flowers would sing instead of
giving out their proper scents, and if he left them, he feared utter
anarchy in his kingdom before he got back in the morning. I woke and
saw the ugly face of Mrs. Mitchell bending over me. She was pushing
me, and calling to me to wake up. The moment I saw her I shut my eyes
tight, turned away, and pretended to be fast asleep again, in the hope
that she would go away and leave me with my friends.

"Do let him have his sleep out, Mrs. Mitchell," said Turkey's mother.

"You've let him sleep too long already," she returned, ungraciously.
"He'll do all he can, waking or sleeping, to make himself troublesome.
He's a ne'er-do-well, Ranald. Little good'll ever come of him. It's a
mercy his mother is under the mould, for he would have broken her
heart."

I had come to myself quite by this time, but I was not in the least
more inclined to acknowledge it to Mrs. Mitchell.

"You're wrong there, Mrs. Mitchell," said Elsie Duff; and my reader
must remember it required a good deal of courage to stand up against a
woman so much older than herself, and occupying the important position
of housekeeper to the minister. "Ranald is a good boy. I'm sure he
is."

"How dare you say so, when he served your poor old grandmother such a
wicked trick? It's little the children care for their parents
nowadays. Don't speak to me."

"No, don't, Elsie," said another voice, accompanied by a creaking of
the door and a heavy step. "Don't speak to her, Elsie, or you'll have
the worst of it. Leave her to me.--If Ranald did what you say, Mrs.
Mitchell, and I don't deny it, he was at least very sorry for it
afterwards, and begged grannie's pardon; and that's a sort of thing
_you_ never did in your life."

"I never had any occasion, Turkey; so you hold your tongue."

"Now don't you call me _Turkey_. I won't stand it. I was christened as
well as you."

"And what are _you_ to speak to me like that? Go home to your cows. I
dare say they're standing supperless in their stalls while you're
gadding about. I'll call you _Turkey_ as long as I please."

"Very well, Kelpie--that's the name you're known by, though perhaps no
one has been polite en