"Mariah is pretty well off," said Mrs. Wheatcroft complacently. "So is her mother. She is the queen

of the ocean nowadays."

66 Girls," John Wheatcroft's head was at the door, "do you want to ride on a log to mill?" As he spoke he tossed across the room a bunch of green stuff to Grandfather: "Here's your catnip, Grandfather." "I should think we did!" said Helen. "I don't know," said Mariah doubtfully.

"He that will not when he may,

When he will he shall have nay,"

warned his mother.

66

Let me improve that," said Helen with a quick glance at Mariah :

"She that will not when she may,

When she wills shall have her way."

"That is true," replied John Wheatcroft's approving voice. "Come, Mariah."

Mariah hesitated, with sweet, troubled looks; then she went.

"Sometimes I do not want my way," she said to Helen as they stood together in the shed.

"What is your way?"

"I don't know."

"I don't see how you can help knowing," replied Helen. "I always know what I want, from a buttonhook up to going to Vassar."

"" What is Vassar?'

"A girl's college."

"I shouldn't like that."

66

Perhaps you would; you don't know.'

"I know I wouldn't. I think I know what I do

not like better than what I do like.

It's pretty hard when what you don't like makes somebody -well, not unhappy, exactly————”

"Not exactly," mimicked Helen.

"There's no one I dare tell," whispered Mariah, for John Wheatcroft had turned from the yard to call them again.

"I wouldn't tell anybody; I would know," said Helen. "You are a goose, Mariah."

CHAPTER XXI

A

A SUMMER IN WESTHOLT

Not first the glad and then the sorrowful,
But first the sorrowful, and then the glad.

GAIN the summer

-Horatius Bonar.

came in Westholt. Again

there were the same trusting thirteen at the breakfast, dinner, and supper table in Dolly French's household.

Not always the same thirteen, and often there were fifteen, sometimes twenty, for friends came from near and several from far. It was like the summer before, only better, Helen said one morning, and every heart echoed the "better" with joy and deep thankfulness. From Baby Dolly upward every one had something to be glad for this new summer.

Guy and Zay had their garden. A large bed had been dug up for them and prepared for seed in the old garden. Guy called it the Garden of Eden, and Zay was sure it was like the Garden of Eden the day she found Guy screaming because of a snake. It was a harmless black snake, and Herbert came to the rescue with a pitchfork. Zay told the boys that the Garden of Eden snake was not dead yet, because Miss Helen's grandmother had told her so.

The snake episode was the excitement of the summer. There were other experiences, where sin seemed to have entered in, and the children quarreled and cried over the flowers; but Miss Helen always had a story to tell that fitted the case of both little sinners, and they speedily forgave each other.

Guy begged for "stories about a garden," and as Mrs. Hooker was the family story-teller, she told them all the garden stories she could find in that children's story book, the Bible.

When the early unripe green apples fell, both Zay and Guy were fond of biting into them, and sometimes eating with their out-of-door appetites and strong little teeth down to the core. When this was discovered they were forbidden to eat them unless they were baked.

One evening at the supper table Guy announced in the tone of one of the successful explorers: "Now I've found out why Adam and Eve had to go out of the Garden of Eden. They didn't eat the apple baked."

All their lives long the children would remember their garden summer.

Hester and Herbert had experiences many and varied; the happiest was that they had sister all their

own.

Herbert's thrilling experience came the day he went with Hester to play in John Wheatcroft's hay field. After riding the hay rake for a while, he jumped off, started on a run across the field, climbed a stone wall

and slipped off; a stone tottering, then falling as he fell, struck his knee.

Hester, who had followed him to do everything he did, screamed; but it was several moments before John Wheatcroft reached the boy who had risen to his feet.

"I did it that time," muttered Herbert, rubbing his knee. 66 It hurts like fun."

"A stone is a heavy football," said John; "I'd try a lighter one next time. Will you go in and let my mother bathe it with hamamelis? Hamamelis is

her great cure. I shouldn't wonder if you would find Grandfather in there being rubbed; he had rheumatism this morning."

"We will go and see Grandfather," said Hester. "Does it hurt you to walk, Herbie ?"

John Wheatcroft watched the children as they walked over the uneven stubble toward the house; the boy walked with a limp, the girl with her arm about him. He drove the children home after supper, saying to Herbert that it would be better for him not to walk.

The next day Herbert enjoyed the distinction of being an invalid. Mrs. Hooker made vivid to all the children grouped on the piazza the scene in Shunem when the child was grown and went out to his father to the reapers. "And he said unto his father, My head, my head! And he said to a lad, Carry him to his mother."