feel as kindly towards you as towards anybody in this wide world."

Maybe we can get a chance to sell the farm. If we can, I'll help you then with a good, round sum. Now, then! you fix up the old place and make it look less like the Wrath o' Fate had struck it and maybe some foolish rich man will come along and want to buy it. If you find a customer, I'll pay you a right fat commission, girls."

But this was "all in the offing;" the Bray girls were concerned mostly with their immediate adventures.

To set forth on this pilgrimage to Hillcrest Farm--and alone--was an event fraught with many possibilities. Both Lyddy and 'Phemie possessed their share of imagination, despite their practical characters; and despite the older girl's having gone to college for two years, she, or 'Phemie, knew little about the world at large.

So they looked forward to Monday morning as the Great Adventure.

It was a moist, sweet morning, even in the city, when they betook themselves early to the railway station, leaving Aunt Jane luxuriously sipping tea and nibbling toast in bed--_this_ time with her nightcap on.

March had come in like a lion; but its lamblike qualities were now manifest and it really did seem as though the breath of spring permeated the atmosphere--even down here in the smoky, dirty city. The thought of growing things inspired 'Phemie to stop at a seed store near the station and squander a few pennies in sweet-peas.

"I know mother used to put them in just as soon as she could dig at all in the ground," she told her sister.

"I don't believe they'll be a very profitable crop," observed Lyddy.

"My goodness me!" exclaimed 'Phemie, "let's retain a little sentiment, Lyd! We can't eat 'em--no; but they're sweet and restful to look at. I'm going to have moon-flowers and morning-glories, too," and she recklessly expended more pennies for those seeds.

Their train was waiting when they reached the station and the sisters boarded it in some excitement. 'Phemie's gaiety increased the nearer they approached to Bridleburg, which was their goal. She was a plump, rosy girl, with broad, thick plaits of light-brown hair ("molasses-color" she called it in contempt) which she had begun to "do up" only upon going to work. She had a quick blue eye, a laughing mouth, rather wide, but fine; a nose that an 

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