were a caution, and no mistake.

But in spite of all, their foster-parents lived in happy
unconsciousness of their imperfections. For they were so wonderfully
clever that Jake and Hannah were lost in admiration.

Certainly they worked a reform in the slow-moving Sawyer household.
They started with the garden, and even Mrs. Winters had to admit they
made an improvement there. Jake and Hannah had long felt the
humiliation of their scratched and scarred front yard, in such ugly
contrast to its trim surroundings, but they had never been able to
better matters. Hannah had received a present, some years before, of
twelve new fowls, which, as was their pious custom, she and Jake
presented with Bible names, calling them for the twelve sons of Israel.
And now each, like its namesake, had many descendants that had
multiplied upon the face of the garden, and turned that promising land
into a desert. Every year Jake faithfully dug flower-beds, and Hannah
as faithfully planted seeds; but, just as regularly, they were
scratched up by the Twelve Tribes.

But when the orphans arrived the marauders were taught their true
place. Though it was late in the season, the twins planted a half
bushel of flower seeds, and dug and raked enough for a plantation.
Then, the first time the Twelve Tribes emigrated from the back yard
they were promptly shooed across the street and over into the doctor's
garden. Davy Munn, indignant at this unsolicited presentation, as
promptly shooed them back again, and war was declared. Tim had
hitherto looked upon the gardening enterprise with contempt, but now he
entered heartily into it, and the battle raged tumultuously. Each side
was bombarded with sticks and stones and clods of dirt and hysterical
hens, until Granny Long sent word to the doctor that if he didn't want
to be buried alive he'd better do something to the orphans, and that
right speedily. So the young man marched into the field, routed both
sides, and chased the Twelve Tribes back to their own country. For a
long time the eldest orphan felt the terrifying strength of the arm
that had lifted him from the ground and shaken him till his teeth
chattered. Thereafter he had such a profound admiration for the doctor
that his viceroy, Davy Munn, was allowed to rule his own yard in peace.

But the hens had still to be conquered, so the orphans set to work and
built around the back yard a lofty fence of wire and laths, borrowed
from the sawmil