lled
him off, an' then he wouldn't have tumbled into the pond, an' oh,
my!--_didn't_ he splash bully!"

"Then _you's_ got to be bited with a fiss," said Toddie, "an' make him
tumble in again, for _me_ to laugh 'bout."

"You're two naughty boys," said Mrs. Burton. "Is this the way you take
care of your sick uncle?"

"_Did_ take care of him," exclaimed Toddie; "told him a lovely Bible
story, an' you didn't, an' he wouldn't have had no Sunday at all if I
hadn't done it. An' we's goin' to take him widin' this afternoon."

Mrs. Burton hurried home, but it seemed to her that she had never met so
many inquiring acquaintances during so short a walk. Arrived at last,
she ordered her nephews to their room, and flung herself in tears
beside her husband, murmuring:

"Henry!"

And Mr. Burton, having viewed the ruined dress with the eye of
experience, uttered the single word:

"Boys!"

"What am I to do with them?" asked the unhappy woman.

Mr. Burton was an affectionate husband. He adored womankind, and
sincerely bemoaned its special grievances; but he did not resist the
temptation to recall his wife's announcement of five days before, so he
whispered:

"Train them."

Mrs. Burton's humiliation by her own lips was postponed by a heavy
footfall, which, by turning her face, she discovered was that of her
brother-in-law, Tom Lawrence, who remarked:

"Tender confidences, eh? Well, I'm sorry I intruded. There's nothing
like them if you want to be happy. But Helen's pretty well to-day, and
dying to have her boys with her, and I'm even worse with a similar
longing. You can't spare them, I suppose?"

The peculiar way in which Tom Lawrence's eyes danced as he awaited a
reply would, at any other time, have roused all the defiance in Alice
Burton's nature; but now, looking at the front of her beautiful dress,
she only said:

"Why--I suppose--we _might_ spare them for an hour or two!"

"You poor, dear Spartan," said Tom, with genuine sympathy, "you shall be
at peace until their bedtime anyhow."

And Mrs. Burton found occasion to rearrange the bandage on her husband's
face so as to whisper in his ear:

"Thank Heaven!"

SAILING UP STREAM.

[_The following is quoted, by permission, from Mr. Habberton's popular
book_, "THE BARTON EXPERIMENT," _published by_ G.P. PUTNAM'S SONS, _New
York_.]

The superintendency of the Mississippi Valley Woolen Mills was a
position which exactly suited Fred Macdonald, and it gave hi