diate vicinity. This young gentleman had a pleasing little
custom of deluging the united family at meal-time, at least once
regularly every day, with milk and bread-crumbs; maternal and paternal
injunctions, threats, and punishments notwithstanding, he contrived
every day some perfectly novel, ingenious, and totally unexpected method
of accomplishing the same; uniting, in his efforts, the strategy of a
Napoleon, with the unruffled composure of a Grant.

"I don't know but what I'll see what father thinks about it," Mrs.
Breynton went on, thoughtfully. "If he should be willing--"

"Good, good!" cried Gypsy, clapping her hands. "Father's in the library.
Winnie, you run up and ask him if we can't go up Rattlesnake."

"Well," said Winnie, "when I just get through eatin'. I'm goin' to make
him let me horseback as much as you or anybody else."

Winnie finished his toast with imperturbable deliberation, pushed back
his chair, and jumped up.

[Illustration]

Splash! went a shower of milk all over him, his mother, the table, and
the carpet. Everybody jumped. Winnie gasped and stood dripping.

"Oh-oh! how did he do it? Why, Winnie _Breynton_!"

For there hung the mug from his waist, empty, upside down, _tied to his
bib_.

"In a hard knot, if you'll believe it! I never saw such a child in all
my life! Why, _Winnie_!"

The utter blankness of astonishment that crept over Winnie's face when
he looked down and saw the mug hanging, Mr. Darley might have made a
small fortune out of; but the pen of a Cicero could not attempt it. It
appeared to be one of those cases when "the heart feels most though the
lips move not."

"What _did_ you do such a thing for? What could possess you?"

"Oh," said Winnie, very red in the face, "it's there, is it? I was a
steamboat, and the mug was my stove-pipe, 'n' then I forgot. I want a
clean apron. I don't want any milk to-morrer."

This was in the early summer. The holidays had come and gone, and the
winter and the spring. Coasting, skating, and snowballing had given
place to driving hoop, picking flowers, boating, and dignified
promenades on the fashionable pavement down town; furs and bright woolen
hoods, tippets, mittens, and rubber-boots were exchanged for calico
dresses, comfortable, brown, bare hands, and jaunty straw hats with
feathers on them. On the whole, it had been a pleasant winter: times
there had been when Gypsy heartily wished Joy had never come, when Joy
heartily wished she