with old Amos that first evening, and that
sufficed, for Amos had enriched my own childhood, and I knew that
nothing which could amuse or instruct would be omitted.

Billy felt that he and Jimmie, Aubrey, Captain Featherstone, and Sir
Wemyss constituted the men of the household. When I asked him why he
did not include Mr. Beguelin, he put his hands behind him, spread his
short legs apart, and said:

"Well, you see, Miss Tats, Mr. Beguelin has just been married, and
bridegrooms don't count."

Things went smoothly enough that first day while my people were
becoming acquainted. Then it was Jimmie, dear blessed old, maladroit,
hot-tempered Jimmie, always so completely at home in a business deal,
and always so pathetically awkward and so confidently bungling in
domestic crises, who supplied us with sufficient material for a book on
"How Not to Prune Trees Properly."

We all went out to the apple-trees early in the morning. As usual, Sir
Wemyss was dressed for the part. Why is it, I wonder, that the British
always find themselves dressed for the occasion? I believe, if an
Englishman were wrecked in mid-ocean, with only a hat-box for baggage,
that out of that box he could produce bathing-trunks in which to drown
properly.

The Angel was frankly and simply disreputable, his idea of being
properly clad for farm-work being to be ragged wherever possible and
faded all over. Jimmie, however, wore his ordinary business clothes,
patent leather shoes, and a derby hat. And as events transpired, I was
glad of it. I love to think of Jimmie pruning trees in patent leathers
and a derby.

Being, as I say, confident, Jimmie, who never had seen a tree pruned,
waited for no instructions, but sprang nimbly upon a barrel, and,
standing on his tiptoes, reached up and snipped at the lower branches.
Sir Wemyss took a ladder and his pruning-knife, and disappeared from
view into the thickest part of the tree. But hearing the industry of
Jimmie's scissors, he parted the branches and called out:

"I say there, old man! You are cutting off twigs. These are the
things which need to go--these suckers. See?"

"Yes, Jimmie," I said, pleasantly. "You are not trimming a hedge, you
know. You are--"

Alas, that accidents are always my fault! Jimmie turned to glare at
me, and the treacherous barrel-head gave way, letting him down most
ungently into its middle, and rasping his shins in the descent in a
manner which must have been partic