of the
girls, and the waving of handkerchiefs by Mrs. Carlton and Uncle Morris,
from the piazza.

"I want to drive!" muttered Charlie, as soon as they were fairly started.

"You must eat a little more beefsteak, and grow a little taller, my boy,
before you undertake to drive such a span as this," replied Mr. Sherwood,
smiling at the boy's presumption.

"I _will_ drive!" growled Charlie, grasping the reins, and giving them a
jerk, which startled the spirited creatures into an uneasy gallop.

"Whoa there, steady Kate, steady!" said Mr. Sherwood, removing the boy's
hands and reining up his team.

After soothing his horses, and bringing them to a gentle trot again, Mr.
Sherwood took his reins in his right hand, and, grasping Charlie with his
left, suddenly jerked him over the driver's seat, into the bed of the
wagon, saying,

"Boys! take care of this little coachman!"

This was not so easily done. Charlie's ugly temper was up. He tried to
scramble back to Mr. Sherwood's side, but the larger boys held him firmly
in spite of kicks and blows which he dispensed without ceremony, until,
fairly tired out, he sat down on the floor of the wagon, biting his thumbs
and looking like a lump of ill-nature. This display of ugliness spoiled
the pleasure of the drive. It was worse than a shower of rain, for it
threw a black cloud over the spirits of the party, and made them all
unhappy.

They had not fully recovered their cheerfulness, when they came to
Duncan's pond, and in sight of old Joe Bunker's flagstaff, from the top of
which the stars and stripes proudly floated in the fine breeze of that
October afternoon.

"There's the bunting you gave old Mr. Bunker!" observed Guy to his friend
Richard.

"Yes, there it is, sure enough, and old Timbertoe is as proud of it as a
little boy is of his first pair of pantaloons," said Richard, laughing at
the oddity of his own comparison.

"Or, as Richard Duncan _was_, of that famous shot from his pea-shooter,
which hit Professor Nailer's long nose," said Norman Butler, chuckling and
rubbing his hands, at the recollection of that exciting scene at the
Academy, a few months before.

"Or, as my sister Jessie is of her Uncle Morris," said Guy.

Mr. Sherwood's loud whoa! whoa! and the stopping of the horses in front of
Joe Bunker's barn, put an end to this series of comparisons. This was the
place where they were to leave the horses; for butternut--trees were quite
numerous in some extens