he table and brought in the lamp; then she retired to the kitchen,
leaving the young people to themselves.

Hope was darning stockings. She had one of Hubert's socks drawn on over
her hand, which showed, white and dainty, through the great, ragged
hole. Hubert sat near her with little Allyn on his knee, tiding over a
crisis in the young man's temper by showing him pictures in the
dilapidated Mother Goose which had done duty for successive McAlisters,
from seventeen-year-old Hope down.

"Stop kicking brother," he commanded, as Allyn lifted up his voice and
his heels in vigorous protest against things in general, and the
approach of the sandman in particular. "Listen, Allyn,--

'There was a little man,
And he had a little gun,
And his bullets were made of lead, lead, lead.'"

Theodora appeared on the threshold of the great china closet, where she
was washing the cups and plates. She had a dish-cloth in one hand and
three or four spoons in the other.

"You don't put enough emphasis into it, Hu," she said mockingly. "This
is the way it should sound, like this,--

'There was a little cow,
And it had a little calf,
And it wouldn't ever go to bed, bed, bed.'

Never mind, Allyn, sister will come in a few minutes and put your
nightie on. Oh, Babe, I wish you'd hurry and put away these dishes."

But Babe, baptismally known as Phebe, was engaged in tickling Allyn's
toes, with the praiseworthy intention of making him kick the harder.
Accordingly, she was deaf to the voice of Theodora, who was forced to
put away the cups herself. She did it with a bumping impatience,
grumbling the while.

"I do wish that everlasting old Susan would wash these things. The idea
of my being tied to a dish-pan, all my days, and Babe never will help a
bit! It's not fair." She set down a cup with a protesting whack which
threatened to wreck its handle.

"Oh, Teddy?" Hubert called, from the next room.

"Well?" Her face cleared, as it always did at the voice of her twin
brother.

"Drop something?"

"No. Wish I had. I'd like to throw this dish-pan into the street."

"'Most through?"

"Never shall be. Do put Allyn down and come to help me."

He settled the child, book and all, in a corner of the old haircloth
sofa which ran across the end of the room, and, with his hands in his
pockets, he sauntered into the china closet and sat down on the little
step-ladder that stood there, ready to lead to an asc