and-a-half
house, with a porch running all across the front, roofed over with
weather-worn shingles. The hall doors, back and front, stand wide open,
and there is a long vista reaching down to the clump of woods made up of
a much-patched-up trellis with several kinds of vines growing over it to
furnish a delightful shade in summer. Some benches in the shining glory
of new green paint stand along the edge. There was a small table with
three people about it, and the stout, easy-going hostess, who
pronounced them "lucky," as there comes a three-minutes' fierce downpour
of rain while the sun is still shining, then stops, and everything is
beaded with iridescent gems. The very sky seems laughing, and the round
sun fairly winks with an amused joviality.

In the small front yard the grass is green and thickly sown with tulips
that have two sheath-like leaves of bluish-green enfolding the bud. "It
will be a sight presently," exclaimed Polly, "but so will most of the
gardens. Why, we might be Hollanders, such a hold has this tulip mania
taken of us!"

By craning their necks a little they can look out on the Delaware and
see the ambitious little creek rushing into it. The glint of the sun
upon the changing water is magnificent.

"What a beautiful spot! Why, Polly, have we ever been here before?"
asked Allin.

"No, I think not. There are some places very like it on the Schuylkill.
But I do not remember this."

Then the hostess comes to inquire what she can serve them with. There is
fresh birch beer, there is a sassafras metheglin made with honey, there
is mead, and she looks doubtfully at the two soldiers as if her simple
list might not come up to their desires.

"And cheesecake?" ventured Primrose.

"Oh, yes! and wafers and gingerbread, and real Dutch doughnuts."

Primrose glanced around, elated. Her birthday treat was to be a success.

So they sat and refreshed themselves and jested, with Primrose in her
sunniest mood, while the sun dropped lower and lower and burnished the
river.

"I wonder if there are many violets in the woods."

"Oh, yes, indeed!" answered the woman. "It's rather early for many
people to come and I am out of the way until they begin to sail up and
down the river; that's when it is warmer, though to-day has been fine
enough."

"Suppose we go and gather the violets," suggested Philemon.

"Of course we expect you to go, don't we, Polly? But then we are going
also."

"Won't it be wet?"

"Not