. "Tave and I didn't see you anywhere when we drove up."

The twins looked at each other and screwed their lips into a violently
repressive contortion.

"We've been over to the sheepfolds with 'Lias."

"Why, 'Lias has been out in the barn for the last half hour--what were
you doing over there, I'd like to know?" Their mother spoke sharply, for
untruth she would not tolerate.

"We did stay with 'Lias till he got through, then we played ranchmen and
made believe round up the cattle the way the boys wrote us they do." Two
of their brothers were in the West trying their fortune on a ranch and
incidentally "dovetailing into the home business," as the Colonel
defined their united efforts along the line of mutton raising.

"Well, I never!" their mother ejaculated; "I suppose now you'll be
making believe you're everything the other boys are going to be."

The little girls giggled and nodded emphatically.

"Well, Aileen," she said as she took her seat at the table, "times have
changed since I was a girl, and that isn't so very long ago. Then we
used to content ourselves with sewing, and housework, and reading all
the books in the Sunday school library, and making our own clothes, and
enjoying ourselves as much as anybody nowadays for all I see, what with
our picnics and excursions down the Bay and the clam bakes and winter
lecture course and the young folks 'Circle' and two or three dances to
help out--and now here are my girls that can't be satisfied to sit down
and hem good crash towels for their mother, but must turn themselves
into boys, and play ranchmen and baseball and hockey on the ice, and
Wild West shows with the dogs and the pony--and even riding him
a-straddle--and want to go to college just because their two brothers
are going, and, for all I know, join a fraternity and have secrets from
their own mother and a football team!" She paused long enough to help
the twins bountifully.

"Sometimes I think it's their being brought up with so many boys, and
then again I'm convinced it's the times, for all girls seem to have
caught the male fever. What with divided skirts, and no petticoats, and
racing and running and tumbling in basket ball, and rowing races, and
entering for prize championships in golf and the dear knows what, it'll
be lucky if a mother of the next generation can tell whether she's
borned girls or boys by the time her children are ten years old. The
land knows it's hard enough for a married woman to