r, but with hair and
eyes as dark, and he wore a sort of habitual side-look, as if his mind
were all the while inquiring if anybody within sight happened to have
any thing he wanted.

They both bore a strong likeness to their father, only they missed
something bluff and hearty in his accustomed manner; and they each had
also a little suggestion of their mother, that did not, however go so
far as to put anybody in mind of their aunt Foster.

Nobody need have failed to see, at all events, after watching one or two
of their glances at each other, that they were the very boys to play the
meanest kind of practical jokes when they could do it safely. There is
really no accounting for boys; and Joe and Fuz, therefore, might fairly
be set down among the "unaccountables."

There was no sort of wonder that their easy-going mother and their
joke-admiring father should be quite willing to have them spend
three-quarters of the year at boarding-school, and as much as possible
of the remainder somewhere else than "at home."

After Mr. Hart went out to his business that morning, and Mrs. Hart set
herself about her usual duties, Joe and Fuz took with them into the
street the whole Grantley question.

"We'll have to go, Fuz."

"Of course. But we must have more to eat, and more fun, than we had last
time."

"Ford's coming, is he? The little prig! We'll roast him."

"So we will that young missionary."

"Look out about him, Joe, while he's at our house. He's coming right
here, you know."

"Don't you be afraid. His folks are old friends of mother's. We'll let
up on him till we get him safe to Grantley."

"Then we'll fix him."

They had plots and plans enough to talk about; but neither they, nor any
of the boys they named, nor any of the other boys they did not name, had
the least idea of what the future really had in store for them. Dab
Kinzer and Ford Foster, in particular, had no idea that the world
contained such a place as Grantley, or such a landlady as Mrs. Myers.

They had as little suspicion of them as they had had of finding Annie
Foster in the sitting-room that day, when they walked in with their
famous strings of fish.

Ford kissed his sister, but that operation hardly checked him for an
instant in his voluble narrative of the stirring events of his first
morning on the bay. There was really little for anybody else to do but
to listen, and it was worth hearing.

There was no sort of interruption on the part of