d so.

"The last of June isn't the best time in the year for open fires,"
suggested Peggy. "But I do think that to-night seems a little cooler.
Perhaps we might have a fire and not swelter."

"We could roast apples, couldn't we?" Amy cried. "And chestnuts. Only
there aren't any chestnuts."

"And just a few very wormy apples," added Ruth. "But we can tell
stories, and sit around in a circle, and not have any light in the room,
except the light of the fire."

The prospect was so alluring that supper was dispatched in haste, and
one or two of the girls went so far as to suggest letting the dishes
wait over till the next day. But as Peggy expressed horror at this
unhousewifely proceeding, and Amy called attention to the fact that
left-over dishes are doubly hard to wash, the motion failed to carry.
Five pairs of busy hands made short work of the necessary task, and when
the dishes were out of the way, and Peggy was conducting Dorothy
up-stairs to bed, the others made a rush to the woodshed and filled
their gingham aprons with pine knots and shavings.

Dorothy suspecting delights from which she was to be excluded, was
inclined to make slow work of undressing, and relieved the tedium of the
process by frantic demonstrations of affection. "Wish you'd go to bed
with me, Aunt Peggy. 'Cause I love you so awfully."

"Oh, this isn't bedtime for big girls. They won't be sleepy for a long
while yet."

"I won't be sleepy for a long while, either. Won't you sit beside my
bed, Aunt Peggy, 'cause I'm 'fraid. If a bear should come--"

"Oh, Dorothy, don't think so much about bears. Think about the little
angels that watch good children when they are asleep."

Dorothy fell into a fit of musing. "I wish those little angels would
play with me when I was awake, 'stead of watching me when I was asleep.
Say, Aunt Peggy, which would you rather have, wings or roller-skates?"

Peggy steered the conversation away from this delicate question to
Dorothy's prayers, which Dorothy galloped through with cheerful
irreverence. On the "Amen" her eyes flashed open.

"Now, Aunt Peggy, you've got to tack down my eyelids, same as my mamma
does."

"Why, of course." Peggy patiently kissed the long-lashed lids shut,
stimulated by Dorothy's cheerfully impersonal comments on her
performance, and even drove a few extra "tacks," in quite unnecessary
spots, as, for example, the corners of Dorothy's roguish mouth, and the
dimple showing in the curve of her