door of Miss Ruth's room, her face flushed,
her hair in the wildest confusion, and the skirt of her calico frock
quite detached from the waist, hanging over her arm.

"Wasn't it lucky that the gathers ripped?" she cried, holding up the
unlucky fragment. "If they hadn't, mamma, I should be hanging, head
down, from the five-barred gate in the lower pasture, and no body to
help me but the cows. You see, I set out to jump, and my skirt got
caught in a nail on the post."

"O Mollie!" said her mother, "what made you climb the five-barred gate?"

"'Cause she's a big tom-boy," said Lovina Tibbs, who had come from the
kitchen to call the family to supper. "Ain't yer 'shamed of yerself,
Mary Elliot?--a great girl like you, most ten years old, walkin' top o'
rail fences and climbin' apple-trees in the low pastur'!"

"No, I'm not!" said Mollie, promptly.

"Hush, Mollie," said Mrs. Elliot. "Lovina, that will do. Wash your face
and hands, Mollie, and make yourself decent to come to supper."

An hour later, seated in the hammock, the girls discussed their aunt's
plan.

"We'll have the Jones girls," said Susie, "and Grace Tyler, and Nellie
Dimock, she's such a dear little thing; and I suppose we must ask Fan
Eldridge, because she lives next door, though I dread to have her come,
she gets mad so easy; but mamma wouldn't like to have us leave her out;
and then, let's see--oh! we'll ask Florence Austin, the new girl, you
know."

"Would you?" said Mollie, doubtfully. "We don't know her very well, and
she dresses so fine and is kind of _citified_, you know. Ar'n't you
afraid she'll spoil the fun?"

"No," said Susie, decidedly. "Mamma said we were to be good to her
because she's a stranger; and I think she's nice, too--not a bit proud,
though her father is so rich."

"Well," Mollie assented, who, though thirteen months older than her
sister, generally yielded to Susie's better judgment; "let her come,
then. That makes six besides us, and Aunt Ruth said half a dozen would
be plenty. Sue, I think it's going to be real jolly, don't you?"

CHAPTER III.

THE STORY OF DINAH DIAMOND.

Miss Ruth Elliot was the minister's sister. And two years before, when
she came to live in the parsonage, an addition of two rooms was built
for her on the ground floor because she was an invalid, and lame, and
could not climb the stairs.

They were pretty rooms, with soft carpets, pictures on the walls, and in
the winter time the sun shining