boys."

"Don't care if he has!" And Allie made a little grimace of defiance as
she scrambled to her feet. "I'm not going to give up all my good times
and take to fancy work, when it's as much as I can do to sew on my own
buttons. He can stay in the house, and sing songs and sew patchwork all
day long, if he wants to, but I'm not going to give up all my frolics;
need I, boys?" she concluded, in a mutinous outburst, quite at variance
with her recent plea for their expected guest.

Howard laughed teasingly.

"Catch Allie turning the fine young lady! If you shut her up in a
parlor, she'd jump over the chairs and play tag with herself around the
table; and Marjorie is about as bad."

"Perhaps I am," she assented placidly; "but you boys could never get
along without us. I've heard you say, over and over again, that we can
catch a ball as well as half the boys in town, and I can outrun you any
day. Want to try?"

"Not much," returned Howard, laughing, though there rankled in his mind
the memory of recent races in which he had not been the winner. "You
only beat me because you've been used to this air longer than I have.
Besides, it would hurry us home too much, and I've an idea that this may
be the last time that we four chums will be off together, for one while.
I shall have to trot round with that fellow, for the next week, and show
him the ways of the country, so he won't make too great a jay of
himself. But, I say, if it doesn't storm to-morrow, we'll come down here
again in the afternoon, and have an hour or two on the ice before it's
spoiled."

With their skates strapped together and slung over their shoulders,
their collars turned up around their ears, and their hands plunged deep
into pockets and muffs, they turned northward along the bank of the
creek for a short distance, and then struck off across the level, open
ground till they came into one of the streets of the little town, which
they followed until they reached the main business street. There they
parted, Ned and Marjorie turning to the west, while Howard and Allie
kept straight on towards the north, and finally stopped at a small brick
house, a low, one-story affair, yet much more elaborate than the average
dwelling of the town, where the architecture was largely of the
log-house species, though often covered with a layer of boards to
disguise the primitive nature of the materials.

The front door opened directly into the little parlor, and into this