uncle
Rutherford.

"How does the boy manage to keep account of his business?" asked uncle
Rutherford, returning the book to Allie, as wise as when she handed it
to him, but not confessing his ignorance.

"By preparing himself for a dyspeptic existence," said Milly. "He
swallows his meals in haste, Thomas says, and rushes from the table,
and around to the Fourth Avenue to receive Tony's report, and be back
in time for his work. Nor is he always quite in time, I imagine; but
Thomas is indulgent and patient, and Bill helps him. I understand that
the little cripples are really making fair sales, and Jim is reaping
quite a harvest."

"Yes, uncle Rutherford knows that by my 'count-book," said unsuspicious
Allie. "Read it aloud, please, uncle, so they can all hear."

"Hm--hm, yes, my dear; but I do not like to read aloud after dinner,"
said uncle Rutherford, still forbearing to enlighten her innocence.

"It isn't so _much_ reading," murmured Allie, rather hurt, for she
was an over-sensitive child, prone to imagine slights, and, as we know,
given to ready tears. "I'll tell you, people;" and she proceeded to
give the amount made by Jim since he had established the peanut-stand,
with its various divisions for the separate objects of his benevolence
and ambition. The latter figured under the head of "For to be
President;" and if her accounts, or, rather, Jim's as set down by her,
were to be trusted, he had really done very well in the stand business.

"We know two deforms," quoth Daisy, solemnly, as Allie closed; "one
deform is very nice and good, and the ofer is horrid and scratching.
One is Captain Yorke's, and the ofer is Jim's peanut-stand girl. But we
have to be good to the cross deform, 'cause God made her that way.
Allie and I are going to try and make her nice and pleasant, too."

"She thinks we're proud, and only like to go to see her, and show her
our nice dolls and things, to make her feel sorry," said Allie; "Tony
said so. And she turns her hump at us, and makes faces at us, and
_won't_ think we want to be good to her. She thinks we're proud at her,
'cause she has to sell peanuts."

"You go and sell peanuts, then, and show her you're not too proud to do
it," said Douglas, carelessly, and certainly with no thought that the
suggestion would ever be acted upon.

"We needn't to have been afraid about Mrs. Yorke's fit-to-be-seenedness,"
said Allie, hopping delightedly around on one foot, the day after the
arriva