e when they
are not being used to divide the field."

"Take care you don't tumble! Oh, that's beautiful! I do wish we could
help you!" cried the twins, looking on in the highest admiration while
Lewis slowly pushed and pulled one railing on the top of another
against the wall. Then he tied them together with some bits of string
out of his pocket, and proceeded to mount. It was not a very steady
ladder, but with the wall to lean against there was small fear of
falling, and when near the top of it Lewis could reach the hands that
were eagerly stretched out to help him. In another moment he was
sitting on the Eagle's Nest.

"This is a goodish sort of tree," he remarked, looking round with a
patronizing air. "Very easy to climb, of course--"

"Oh, but I can go much higher than these boughs by the wall!"
interrupted Betty. "So high that my feet are where your head is now."

"That's not much," said Lewis scornfully. "Girls never can climb much.
They just flop about, and catch their frocks in all the branches, and
get giddy, and cry to be helped down again!"

Betty flushed hotly. "You are talking nonsense!" she shrieked. "Silly
nonsense! I can climb much higher than John; and as for crying--"

Her remarks were promptly cut short by a hand being roughly pressed
over her mouth. "Hold your tongue!" whispered Lewis. "Unless you wish
old Mother Howard and her slave-drivers to be after us!"

At this terrible threat Betty looked nervously towards the brick house.
But there was nothing to be seen in that direction except the quiet old
cows in the orchard below. She was so reassured by seeing them chewing
the cud, as if nothing dreadful could possibly happen, that she
regained sufficient courage to remark defiantly that after all Mrs.
Howard did not seem a very formidable person.

"That shows all you know about it!" replied Lewis. "I can tell you a
very different tale. If you two will promise faithfully not to say a
single word of what I tell you to anybody--not to Madge, or your nurse,
or anybody,--then I will tell you something that nobody else knows.
Only it's a secret, you must remember,--a dead secret."

This was very solemn work. Betty and John glanced at each other, both
longing to know the secret, and yet a little afraid of the conditions
that had been imposed.

"Mightn't we just tell Madge if she promises not to repeat it?" Betty
ventured to say.

"Certainly not! We don't want Madge poking her in