_you_. They are too heavy and
dirty to take in your arms, and all the curl is gone out of their
tails."

"So sorry!" said Miss Josey, with the most melancholy of pouts on her
lip, and with a funny reminder of Laura Keene when she uses the same
expression to the discarded _Pomander_ in "Peg Woffington."

"But we have something else that you _will_ like," Susy continued,
determined to atone for any disappointment in the pigs and their
terminations. "We have got a calf--a nice red-and-white spotted calf,
only about a week old."

"Oh, that is the thing!" cried the merry girl. "We will go at once and
have a look at the calf. Does it hook?"

"Hook?--you stupid thing!" laughed Susy. "Why it is only a week old, I
tell you; and of course it hasn't any horns. But come along!" and down
from a convenient peg she pulled a couple of sun-bonnets, her mother's
and her own, sticking one on the gypsy head of Josey and the other on
her own refractory curls. "But stop--we have something else that you
have not thought of"--and she pulled down the head of her cousin and
whispered in her ear.

"Cherries! oh good gracious!" absolutely yelled the young lady.
"Quick--get me some boy's-trousers and a step-ladder! No, you needn't
mind the trousers, as long as it is only you, Susy, who is going to help
me pick; but the step-ladder--don't forget the step-ladder!" and away
she went, flying out of the house, her hand in that of Susan, and the
whole movement more suggestive than anything else, of two young colts
turned out in a clover-field for a summer-day frolic.

Five minutes afterwards, a subterranean observer, could such a person
have been possible, would have seen Miss Josey most unromantically
astride of a limb, half way up the big Tartarean cherry tree overhanging
the smoke-house, appropriating those pulpy little purple globes at a
most luxurious rate, and staining her cherry lips and her white fingers
very nearly of the same color. Susy stood below, laughing and clapping
her hands at mad Joseph's position, and eating, by way of sympathy, the
few clusters thrown down to her by the busy fingers.

But we cannot linger upon this picture, pleasant as it is--nor yet upon
the adventures of Josey among the pigs, chickens, cats, with the calf
(which managed to "butt" her over, even if it could not "hook"), and
among all and singular the belongings and appliances connected with that
cozy little retreat in the country village. Then what a supper