u snooping!" cried Leon.

"Easy son!" said father. "That will do. You lost through your own
carelessness. You left wet mud on the garret floor, and she saw it
when mother sent her for the onion skins. You robbed Laddie of his
last egg this morning; be a good loser yourself!"

"Well, anyway, you didn't get 'em," said Leon to Laddie.

"And she only found them by accident!"

Then we had a big time counting all those eggs, and such another heap
as there was to sell, after mother filled baskets to cook with and
colour. When the table was cleared, Laddie and Leon made tallow
pencils from a candle and wrote all sorts of things over eggs that had
been prepared to colour. Then mother boiled them in copperas water,
and aniline, and all the dyes she had, and the boys polished them, and
they stood in shining black, red, blue and yellow heaps. The onion
ones would be done in the morning. Leon had a goose egg and mother let
him keep it, so he wrote and wrote on it, until Laddie said it would be
all writing, and no colour, and he boiled it in red, after mother
finished, and polished it himself. It came out real pretty with roses
on it and lots of words he wouldn't let any of us read; but of course
it was for Susie Fall.

Next morning he slipped it to her at church. When we got home, all of
us were there except Shelley, and we had a big dinner and a fine time
and Laddie stayed until after supper, before he went to Pryors'.

"How is he making it?" asked Sally.

"You could see she was making it all right; she never looked lovelier,
and mother said Peter was letting her spend away too much money on her
clothes. She told him so, but Peter just laughed and said business was
good, and he could afford it, and she was a fine advertisement for his
store when she was dressed well."

"All I know is," said mother, "that he goes there every whipstitch, and
the women, at least, seem glad to have him. He says Mr. Pryor treats
him decently, and that is more than he does his own family and
servants. He and the girl and her mother are divided about something.
She treats her father respectfully, but she's in sympathy with mother."

"Laddie can't find out what the trouble is?"

"I don't think that he tries."

"Maybe he'd feel better not to know," said Peter.

"Possibly!" said mother.

"Nonsense!" said father.

"You seem to be reconciled," said Elizabeth.

"That girl would reconcile a man to anything," said father.

"Not to