and shiny blue china. Then she crossed the threshold of the living room. Here all the shells and curios brought from over the seas by her sailor brother were arranged, and pictures of the nephew from childhood up adorned table and mantel in new seaweed frames. As she stood there thinking of all the visit would mean to her, the first in twenty years, a neighbor's boy burst rudely in upon her reverie. He brought a telegram that had come on the evening boat, and the novelty of it all filled him with open-mouthed interest so that he was bitterly disappointed when the usually hospitable Miss Phoebe dismissed him with an impatient and excited wave of her trembling old hand. She tore the ominous yellow envelope open, and this is what greeted her hungry eyes:

"Train delayed, so must go straight on. Jack."

Awfully sorry.

She sank back into a chair. Her greatest pleasure was not to be. From without came the roar of the exultant surf rising and falling as the east wind shifted. The laughter of happy wives and girls came up the road, as the evening boats sailed safely into port. But she heard them not, and sat quietly gazing on the opened telegram.

A breeze softly bent the lilacs toward the window, as though to comfort her with their dear, familiar faces, and the cat rubbed his face against the hem of her gown. She arose with a start, and taking the kettle from the stove, made her solitary cup of tea.

JOSEPHINE SANDERSON.

PEACE

In the solemn hush of the evening,

When the world lays its work away,

And waits for the night to bring it strength

For the toil of another day;

When the tired sun is hurrying
Toward his welcome bed in the West,

When the wind and his playmate flowers
Have gone together to rest;

When over the eastern mountains,
Hiding them from our view,
The spirits of night come stealing,
Carrying their jars of dew;

When the cool, damp smells of evening

On every side arise,

The vesper song of the sleepy earth

Sent with incense to the skies;

Then the peace past understanding,
Like a flock of snowy doves,

Descends for a few sweet moments

On the earth God has made and loves.

MARGARET HAMILTON WAGENHALS.

It was after banking hours, but the Chesterton bank was still open. The President and Board of Trustees, all vested in the small person of Lawrence

The Chesterton Bank Robbery Chesterton, sat on the nursery floor, Turk fashion,

prying off the bottom of the bank with a nail file. The Chesterton bank was an imposing iron structure, painted green, and in the shape of a frog which swallowed all deposits with suspicious readiness but refused to cash any checks unless prodded with a screw driver or the aforesaid nail file. No matter how hard the bank was shaken upside down or how diligently the President fished down its throat with a crochet hook, he could never extract a penny until he resorted to violence; and as he did this very often the bank frequently had to suspend payment while the President's father was screwing it together.

On the present occasion the President was merely counting the deposits and registering them in the ledger. This consisted in identifying certain well-known coins and then making some mysterious scrawl in an old diary of his mother's. To-day's entry would have been unintelligible to the average bank cashier-it looked like the word "dog" spelled with two o's and written in an up-hill and very uncertain hand-but it happened to be the only word that the President could spell, and it meant that the cash on hand was correct: seven shiny pennies, four nickels, and two dimes that his grandfather had given him the

week before. It was all there, and he was very glad on the whole that he had not really spent it on a gas balloon for his little baby sister, as a noble but fleeting impulse had lately tempted him to do. Pretty soon he would have enough to buy that best of earthly joys, a cap pistol. He had wanted one ever since Nelson Hawley had lent him his; it was such fun to scare the baby by firing the pistol into her ear. Only mamma did not like it when he left powder caps scattered on the front stairs for people to step on when they came down--but it made such a lovely snap!

Here his soliloquy was interrupted by a voice from downstairs.

"Lawrence, Lawrence, let Lizzie wash your face and hands and then come down and see Aunt Ellen."

Lawrence knew who Aunt Ellen was. She was the deaf lady with the big spectacles, and you had to talk to her through a long rubber tube with a kind of horn on the end of it like a telephone. She frightened him very much by calling him "thee" or "thou," which he vaguely felt to be terms of reproach, and then he often added to his confusion by calling her "thee" and "thou." But his mother always called him into the parlor and said, "Here's your little namesake." And after Aunt Ellen had gone, mamma always looked to see if his nails were clean, and reproved him if he had been chewing the corners of his sailor collar. Yet it was fun to talk through the rubber tube when he could think of anything to say. So after making a hurried circuit of his face with the sponge and washing his hands up to a clearly defined wrist mark, he put his money back into the bank, turned it upside down because the bottom of it was half unscrewed, and then with the Chesterton Bank tucked under one arm the President went downstairs. Aunt Ellen was not in the parlor when he went in but he heard her in the hall taking off her wraps. Suddenly he remembered that mamma did not like to have him bring his toys into the parlor; he was firmly convinced that Aunt Ellen would be much displeased when she saw him with a green frog bank in the parlor, but surely mamma could not object if he stuffed it between the cushions of the Morris chair.

"Here's Lawrence already waiting for you. Kiss your Aunt Ellen, dear," said his mother, and Lawrence dutifully kissed her. Then he went and hung on the back of his mother's rock

ing chair until she reproved him. He was not comfortable, because Aunt Ellen had taken the Morris chair and was sitting on the Chesterton Bank. Aunt Ellen had settled down so heavily that he was a little sorry for the frog, and then perhaps Aunt Ellen herself might not be quite comfortable.

To add to his discomfort, his mother was suddenly called out of the room, leaving him to the mercies of Aunt Ellen and the rubber tube, which suddenly seemed to assume gigantic proportions. But he went and sat down beside his aunt and she put the tube in his hand. In his embarrassment he held it to his ear instead of his mouth and consequently did not hear or answer any of the questions his aunt was asking him. Suddenly Aunt Ellen herself perceived the difficulty.

"Thy mouth, child, to thy mouth!" she screamed, as if he were the deaf one. "I say, how many little boys are there in thy school?"

Lawrence was too confused to know what he was saying, but he murmured something into the tube, and Aunt Ellen interpreted it to suit herself.

"Thirteen and canst thou write thy name?" she inquired. "No, I canst!" said Lawrence, much ashamed. "But I made a blue book mark in school once"; and after hunting desperately in a small trousers pocket and producing several grimy handkerchiefs, he succeeded in extracting the crumpled bookmark.

"Just one moment till I get my glasses," said Aunt Ellen, searching for her pocket. "It seems to be a very pretty necktie. Why-what did I put in my pocket! It seems to be quite heavy!" She was still fumbling with the back of her skirt.

Lawrence gasped; she had evidently discovered the Chesterton Bank. But he summoned all his courage and grasped the rubber tube.

"Please, would thous't mind getting off my bank?" he stammered.

"What! Off a bank! And when dids't thou do it?" asked Aunt Ellen sympathetically, forgetting to search for her spectacles.

Lawrence took a long breath and spoke as loud as he could. "I guess you're sitting on my green frog bank!"

"Sitting on what! Landy me! where is it?" screamed the old lady, jumping up.

But Lawrence did not wait to answer; he dreaded to see Aunt Ellen's face when she found that she had been sitting on a green frog of any description, so he fled upstairs to the nursery and staid there until he heard the front door close. Then he came down and tiptoed into the parlor to get his bank. He was sure that Aunt Ellen had taken it in her wrath, so he heaved a sigh of relief when he saw it on the mantel. He dragged up a chair to stand on and then reached cautiously up for it. It was suspiciously light. He turned it upside down; the bottom was still hanging loosely by two screws, but there was no welcome rattle. His worst fears were realized; the Chesterton Bank had been robbed-and of course Aunt Ellen had done it! He clasped the bank wildly to his heart and fled to the kitchen where his mother was talking to the cook.

"Mamma, Aunt Ellen, she robbed my bank!" he announced with a great lump rising in his throat.

"What-Aunt Ellen take your money! Why of course she didn't," replied his mother. "Let me see-she was looking at it when I came back, and I told her all about it, and then we put it on the mantel."

66

But it's all empty! She did it to punish me, I know she did. I guess she had never sitten on any banks before," sobbed the President, wretchedly conscious that Aunt Ellen had a right to inflict some punishment on him.

The bank was certainly empty, and though the parlor was thoroughly searched, there was no trace of thief or booty. Lawrence was inconsolable all during supper time and insisted on keeping his beloved frog beside his tray.

"And I can't buy any cap pistol," he moaned. "I guess she knew that if I had one I'd fire it right into her ear and make her hear better'n that old rubber thing," he went on indignantly, feeding the poor frog with a spoonful of pudding that immediately dropped through onto the tablecloth below.

"Never mind, Aunt Ellen must have taken it in a fit of absent-mindedness," said his mother, "but we will look for it again this evening-it will surely turn up somewhere."

And after the President had gone to bed and his mother had searched again in the jardinière and even under the buttons of the Morris chair, it did turn up in the shape of a box from Aunt Ellen with capital enough to set the bank on a firmer financial basis than before. The President sat up in bed and