es after."

"What are the snappy ones?" asked Edna.

"Oh, things like Hide-and-Seek and lively things that will keep us on
the jump."

The two little girls followed Ben into the next room and before long
everyone was trying to escape from grandpa who was as eager for a game
of Blind Man's Buff as anybody, and who at last caught Becky, who in
turn caught Howard Colby because he didn't try to get out of her way.
This ended that game, but everybody was so warmed up to the fun that
when it was proposed to carry on a game of Hide and Seek out of doors
all agreed, and Edna was so convulsed with laughter to see her
dignified, great-uncle Wilbur crouching behind a wood-pile and peeping
fearfully over the top that she forgot to hide herself properly and was
discovered by Ben in a moment.

"You're no good at all at hiding," Ben told her. "Anybody could have
found you with half an eye."

"Oh, I don't care," replied Edna; "I'll have just as much fun finding
out some one else," and she it was who made straight for Uncle Wilbur's
wood-pile to which he had returned with the fond belief of its serving
as good a turn a second time.

It was not so very long before the older persons declared that they had
had enough of it. The men returned to the house to have a smoke and the
ladies to chat around the fire. As for the children, it was quite too
much to expect them to go in while there was a twinkle of daylight left,
and, as Amanda expressed it, "They took the place." The girls did not
roam far from the house but the boys wandered much further afield,
bringing caps and pockets full of nuts, and clothes full of burs and
stick-tights, even Ben brought back a hoard of persimmons touched by the
frost and as sweet as honey.

He poured these out on a flat stone near which Edna was standing. "Come
here, Edna," he said, "let's divvy up. I'll give you half; you can take
what you don't eat to your mother and I'll take what I don't eat to my
mother."

Edna squatted down by the stone and began delicately to nibble at the
fruit which still bore its soft purple bloom. "I don't believe I shall
eat very many," she said, "for my dinner is still lasting, and there
will be supper before I am ready for it. We are not going to have a
real, regular set-the-table supper, because grandma thinks Amanda and
Reliance should have some holiday, too, but we are going to have
sandwiches and cakes and nuts and apples and cider and a whole lot of
things; someth