legs."

"I am afraid none of the garden trees will do," said Betty
thoughtfully, as she pondered over the required qualifications.

"Did I say it was to be in the garden?" snapped out Madge. "It will be
in the fields--the farthest part of the fields. And," she added,
leaning forward and whispering mysteriously, "I know the tree."

"Oh, which is it? Where is it?" shouted the twins. John's sulks at
once gave place to his curiosity.

"It's the beech-tree by the wall at the end of the Pig's Field,"
announced Madge. "I have examined it, and it will do exactly."

"You do have such good plans!" murmured Betty admiringly. Indeed, an
elder sister who can work out a project of this sort in her head
without saying a word to anyone, is a member of the family of whom one
may feel justly proud.

"But I hope there's a place for me in this grand tree of yours,"
observed John, in the accent of complaint that was rather habitual to
him. "Because, if I've got to sit on the ground as I do here, and the
enemy comes, it won't be very nice for me; though of course you two
will be all right, so you won't care!" and he crushed the bay leaves
viciously under his feet until the air became quite aromatic.

"If you would only listen to me instead of grumbling you would hear my
whole plan," observed Madge, very reasonably. "We shall not sit on
branches as we have always done before, we will build a house by
putting sticks for a floor. A sort of huge nest, with lots of room for
us all. Of course, if we build it ourselves, we can make it just as
large or as small as we like."

The audience was positively struck dumb by the magnificent ingenuity of
this new idea. The clanging sound of a large bell at last broke the
silence.

"Oh, dear! There is dinner in five minutes!" sighed Betty, wriggling
out of her narrow seat. "And I upset the ink-bottle over my hands, so
that they will take longer to wash than usual, and there will be no
time to hear the rest of your plan now, because I promised to bring
Miss Thompson in a bunch of golden-chains." And she began pulling down
the lowest boughs of the laburnum by swinging upon them with all her
weight.

"All right!" said Madge good-naturedly; "I'll help." Climbing down to
the ground, she began to tear large sprays of golden blossom off the
boughs lowered by Betty's weight. "There, I should think that's
enough!" she said, when her two hands were full to overflowing. "Now
we had better r